Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 346: what you’re looking at

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

HAWKSHAW HALL 329 principle as to be proffered a position which was infamy itself, was enough to make his heart feel as if flery scorpions were writhing around it. And then, too, to have seen the mask so completely torn away from the countenance of her whom he had so fondly loved, to be compelled to look upon her henceforth as a snake wearing a beautiful skin, to have the conviction so rudely forced upon him that she was a lump of moral rottenness, corruption throughout from head to foot, steeped to the very lips in depravity, oh, all this was sufficient to make him mistrust the whole world in future, — almost sufficient to induce him to escape from it as from a morass swarming with reptiles. Ah! these were stern and severe truths indeed for Francis Paton to admit into his soul, but nevertheless they were . truths, and not to be rejected. But the longer he sat medi- tating on that verdant bank where he had thrown himself, the more did he see reason to appreciate the wisdom and the foresight of his father, the Marquis of Eagledean, who had so earnestly conjured him to put Juliana Farefield to the severest test. Ah! and he, in his infatuation, in his blind besotted confidence, in his fervid and enthusiastic trustfulness, would at one moment have abjured that test as an insult to her love, — an outrage to the evidences of affection which she was lavishing upon him. Love! it was a mockery. No, it was the baseness of a depraved passion. Evidences of affection! No, they were the blandishments and the allurements in which the feelings of the profligate woman expressed themselves. Francis Paton remained for more than half an hour seated upon that bank, giving way to his reflections. Sud- denly, he looked at his watch, the chain of which he had been hitherto careful not to display, as the appearance of jewelry would but have ill-assorted with the studied penury of his garb. He looked at his watch, we say, and he found that it was six o’clock. The evening was delicious, but he had no power to appreciate the beauties of nature in the present condition of his mind. It was true that he had grown calmer through that half-hour’s reflection, but still he was very far from being completely tranquillized. He was unhappy, restless, uneasy. Rising from the bank, he wandered on again in a listless mood, not perceiving which direction he was taking, nor CONNIEDOOKS (E(0)