Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER III THE CHAPEL We left Lady Saxondale and her. guests seated together in conversation in one of the magnificent drawing-rooms of the castle, after a visit had been paid to Lord Harold’s chamber. Lady Saxondale herself had retired for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour to the library, as she stated, to write a letter or two, and on her return to the drawing-room she joined in the conversation which was progressing at the time. Mr. Hawkshaw sat with Juliana a little apart from the rest, and though they both mingled in the general discourse, yet he found an opportunity of manifesting these little attentions and paying those assiduities which belong to the pleasing ceremony of courtship. Florina was, alone of all the party, desponding and abstracted. She was pre- viously in low spirits before the accident occurred to her brother, and that circumstance had naturally tended to depress her still more. Lady Macdonald, satisfied that there was nothing alarming in her nephew’s position, had regained the wonted equanimity of her disposition. Lady Saxondale studied to render herself as agreeable as she could, and such an attempt on her part was never made in vain. Toward Mr. Hawkshaw she was particularly courteous and affable, although there was nothing in her manner to show that she played the part of a manceuvring mother endeavouring to secure an eligible husband for her daughter. Nor indeed was it at all necessary for her to lend her aid in the matter, as Juliana had played her cards so well that Mr. Hawkshaw was ensnared, to all appearances, beyond the possibility of self-emancipation from the thraldom of love. At about ten o’clock supper was served up, and Florina suggested that as her brother had taken but little refresh- 18 | Gomichbooks (E(0)