Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

LADY BESs’S HISTORY 133 infatuation would only become the greater, his love the more intimately interwoven with his entire being, that the hour for parting must come at last, sooner or later, and that the longer it was postponed the more deeply would it be felt by him when it did come. He replied that he was aware of all this, that he had-reasoned with himself a thousand times upon the subject during the few past weeks, but that he had not the courage to let me depart. He terminated by conjuring that [I would remain one month longer, — only one month; that if I consented, he would act precisely in accordance with my wishes, that he would never obtrude himself on my presence, save when I chose to receive him, that he would not ask me to walk with him, unless I myself first signified my willingness, and to be brief, he used so many impassioned arguments and vehement entreaties that I knew not how to refuse. The thought struck me, too, that if I did refuse, the madness of his passion was such that he might be rendered desperate, and my position would be made far worse, and the idea simultaneously occurred to me that my best course would be to throw him off his guard so that I might escape. I therefore consented to remain another month at the tower. But I informed him that it was absolutely necessary I shouid communicate with my brother in England, who would be uneasy at my long silence. He said that if I would write to him, addressing my letter from the French town of Perpignan, in the Pyre- nees, one of his men should proceed thither and post the letter, and that if my brother wrote back to me to the post- office in that same town, he would send again at the expira- tion of ten days to fetch the letter for me. ‘T gratefully accepted this proposal, and wrote to Frank at Southampton, desiring him to-write back to me at Per- pigan. I said nothing of my disagreeable adventure at Barcelona, nor of the strange company with whom I had been living for six weeks past, but I led him to believe that I was in a situation as governess in an English family. At the same time I wrote a letter to Mrs. Knight at Barcelona, explaining wherefore I had fled so precipitately, and telling her how the whole affair was a base conspiracy on the part of her wicked son to ruin me, in revenge because I had re- jected his dishonourable overtures. This letter I sealed and enclosed it in the one to Frank, desiring him to post CONnNIEOOOKS (FO)