Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 317: what you’re looking at

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

300 | REYNOLDS’ WORKS to keep, and it shall be kept. Therefore say not another word; you must depart, and I also am in a hurry to begone.”’ ‘“ Here, my good woman, here,” said the marquis, forcing upon her a purse well crammed with bank-notes at one end and with gold at the other. ‘‘ Take this — take this. I shall see you again on the 21st, and will give you more.”’ But Madge Somers hesitated to accept the nobleman’s bounty, and therefore have we used the term that it was forced upon her. What strange feeling was it — or what idiosyncrasy — that made this woman hesitate to receive that purse? She who was penniless at the moment, she who was ever ready to clutch greedily at the means of gratifying her infatuation for the gaming-table, she who throughout a long series of years had existed upon the proceeds of crime, robbery, and extortion, she who, in a word, had never scrupled at any deed of turpitude to obtain gold, — how was it that she hesitated? Ah! there was some strange thought uppermost in her mind, some remorseful sentiment, some compunctious feeling; for there are moments in the lives of even the vilest and the worst of human creatures when the heart is thus touched and the soul thus moved. Such are the inscrutable dispensations of Heaven! Such the mysteries of the character of mankind. And this woman, whose soul was saturated with vice, tanned, hard- ened, iron-bound, petrified, steeled, by a long career of guilt and enormity, — this woman whose life had been dragged through all the moral sinks, cesspools, heaps of feculence, sloughs of mire, bogs, morasses, and accumulated abomi- nations which abound in this great metropolis of ours, — this woman it was that now hesitated to accept that purse! Strange indeed was her look as she fixed her eyes upon William Deveril, and then reverted them upon the counte- nance of the marquis. “Yes, yes,’ said the nobleman, ‘‘ you must take that money, and I will give you more, — much more the next time we meet.”’ Madge Somers weighed the purse in her hand, then opened it, drew forth a single gold piece, still clutched it, still hesi- tated, and at length all in a moment thrust it back upon the marquis, saying, in her habitually curt manner, “ No, Mr. Gunthorpe, I will not take it~’ And now begone, both of you, begone, I say! But once more beware how you breathe Gomichbooks (ee) nm