The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

76 REYNOLDS’ WORKS to you, Edmund, for kindness and respect. Never again will I seek to touch your sympathies. Perverse boy, instead of imploring or entreating, I will act and command.” “Well, then, I suppose it’s a war to the knife,” he ob- served, with flippant disdain, “ and we shall see who will get the better of it.” Thus speaking, he gave another taunting laugh and lounged out of the room. The moment the door closed behind him, a terrible change came over Lady Saxondale; her entire appearance altered, her countenance became posi- tively ghastly, her lips ashy white, and her whole frame con- vulsed with the inward working of the fiercest passions. ‘Viper, that I have cherished in my bosom to sting me! ”’ she said, aloud, and the words came hissing from between her parched lips. “‘ I hate him, yes, I hate him! ” But then she stopped short and glanced with a sudden start of uneasiness toward a door at the extremity of the apartment, for it struck her that a sound resembling a ery of dismay, penetrating thence, had been wafted to her ear. Instantaneously recovering all her self-possession, she approached that door, opened it abruptly, and beheld her two daughters quite near enough and in an attitude to show they had been listening. That inner room was one where the young ladies were not wont to sit at this period of the day, and therefore it had never occurred to Lady Saxondale, throughout the pre- ceding interview with her son, that Juliana and Constance were by any probability so near. She fancied that they were in a more distant apartment,-occupied with their music, drawing, or embroidery, and consequently their presence in that room, as well as the indications above mentioned, naturally struck her with the suspicion that they had penetrated thither on purpose to listen to what was taking place between Edmund and herself. We may add that Juliana, the eldest, was a perfect likeness of her mother, with the same haughty, aquiline profile, hair of the same raven glossiness, eyes of the same dark splendour, a com- plexion of the same clear, delicate olive, and a figure modelled with a like voluptuous symmetry of proportions. Constance, the younger, though possessing the same Hebe proportions of shape, was in all other respects of a different style of beauty, having hght hair, a complexion of dazzling transparency, CONNIE OO KS (E(0)