The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 294: what you’re looking at

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

THE PRECEPTOR AND HIs PUPIL 217 Florina was likewise busied: with kindred reflections, for she felt that whatever barriers might spring up in the way of her union with him whom she thus loved, that still her love would never be impaired, but if there were a possibility of its increasing, it would acquire fresh power in the presence of every difficulty. Nor less could she avoid contrasting this handsome and elegant young man with the insipid- looking and self-sufficient youth to whom her relations sought to sacrifice her. Indeed, carried away by the current of these reflections, she could not help giving audible utter- ance to them, thereby breaking a long silence, during which she and her lover had sat gazing in mute rapture ~ upon each other. “I feel that I have been too docile, too obedient,’’ she observed, in a low, soit voice. “‘I have listened with even a servility of which I am now ashamed, and with a meekness wherein was absorbed all the proper spirit of a woman, to the representations of my aunt Lady Macdonald and to the injunctions of my brother Lord Harold. I never ought to have given an affirmative reply to the suit of Lord Saxon- dale. But while I, on the one hand, was submitting to the control of an aunt and a brother, he, on the other hand, was acting in accordance with the counsel of his mother. For I now understand it all; this alliance was projected and arranged between the two families, in utter disregard of what my own feelings might be. But, oh, I am not to be disposed of in this manner, nor will I suffer all the brightest and choicest flowers of my heart’s spring-time to wither in the sickly atmosphere of society’s conventionalisms, nor be crushed beneath the heel of an aunt’s or a brother’s despotism.”’ As Fiorina thus spoke, her beautiful countenance became flushed with excitement, her nostrils dilated, her eyes flashed brightly, her lips curled with decision, and her bosom swelled proudly. Never had she appeared to Deveril’s view so truly handsome, so transcendingly lovely, as at this moment when asserting the spirit of a young damsel who felt that she had been coerced, but who had resolved to emancipate herself from the shackles of domestic tyranny. The reader may rest assured that little progress was made in the drawing-lesson of that day; nevertheless William Deveril remained the full two hours which he had at first CORnNIECLOOOKS (C(O)