The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 307: what you’re looking at

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

290 REYNOLDS’ WORKS had taken their departure he ordered some dinner to be served up. Little appetite however had the young artist for the food thus placed upon the table. His thoughts were too much absorbed, or, rather, too pleasurably and painfully divided between the two scenes which had marked this memorable day. It was not till past nine o’clock that he quitted his lodging, and the evening being exceedingly beautiful, he determined to walk to his suburban residence, for he felt that exercise and fresh air would soothe the excite- ment of his thoughts. It was ten o’clock as William Deveril entered the Regent’s Park, across which his path lay in the direction of a splendid mansion somewhat isolated from the rest of the superb residences which abound in that district. The evening was warm, some of the casements of that mansion were open, and the swelling tide of music flowed forth to his ear. That music was accompanied by several sweet female voices, and so exquisitely did they sing that the young artist, as passionately fond of music as he was of drawing, stood still to listen. He was enabled to approach to within half a dozen yards of the fence bounding the garden in which the mansion stood, and it was from the open casement of a room on the first floor that the delicious strains of vocal and instrumental harmony were wafted forth. ‘This case- ment was the side window of a drawing-room whose front, with a range of several windows, looked in another direction upon an ampler spread of grounds; and the side window to which we have alluded opened on a balcony toward which the luxuriant clematis and jasmine, mingling with roses crept up against the wall. As William Deveril stood listening to the music, he recollected that Florina had mentioned to him during the two hours they had passed together that day that she was going to a party with her aunt Lady Macdonald to the house of some friends in the Regent’s Park that evening; and as the young artist stood gazing up at the open case- ment, the crimson draperies of which gave a roseate hue to the light shining forth from the interior of the room, he thought to himself, ‘‘ Perhaps it is here that my beloved Florina is now gracing the brilliant assemblage with her presence? Ah! was it some instinctive feeling of this kind which made me prefer walking home to-night, which made CONNIE NOOO KS (E(0)