The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 199: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

182 REYNOLDS’ WORKS female highwayman, for at this moment old Solomon Patch entered the room. He was an ill-looking man, shabbily dressed, of sordid appearance, and with a sneaking slyness in the expression of his countenance. The love of gain was as clearly traced in every line of those angular features and that wrinkled face as if his character had been written thereon, and it required no great depth of observation to perceive that there was scarcely any villainy from which Solomon Patch would shrink so long as he beheld the certainty of a com- mensurate reward. ‘Am [ intruding? ” he asked, as he slowly and hesitatingly entered this room, this deferential question not being addressed to either Chiffin or Madge, but to the Amazonian beauty. | “ Intruding, no!’’ she exclaimed. ‘“ All I want you to do is to take these trinkets which I picked up on the road last might, and give me what according to your ideas you think they are worth.” Thus speaking, Lady Bess, with an indifferent and careless air, took from her pocket a watch and chain and three or four finger-rings. ‘‘ I might have added some beautiful diamond studs to this little parcel of jewelry if I had chosen,’ she observed, with a smile upon the fulness of her ripe and luscious lips, “‘ but I let the poor frightened fellow keep them.”’ While she was thus speaking, the watch and rings which she had laid upon the table had suddenly become the objects of an earnest and intense gaze on the part of Madge Somers, who at once recognized them as having belonged to her guest of the preceding night, young Lord Saxondale. Chifhn the Cannibal was also contemplating the trinkets, not because he knew them, for he did not, but because it was in the man’s nature to feel an interest in anything that was the produce of plunder or other illicit proceedings. Lady Bess was herself looking carelessly at the same objects at the moment, and therefore she did not perceive the atten- tion with which Madge Somers was fixing her eyes on them. Solomon Patch took them off the table, and bent down toward the light in order to examine them as closely as possible with a view to ascertain their value. Then, after a long and careful scrutiny, he said, in a stammering, hesita- CONNIE OO KS (E(0)