Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 386: what you’re looking at

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

THE CONSERVATORY 369 more whether I will accompany you to the altar. Ah, it is a hard thing for a young lady of my rank and position to have to put this restraint upon her feelings and do this violence to her pride, which I am doing now, when suing to him who is of that sex which generally sues to mine! Yes, Frank, I ask you to recall your decision of yesterday; I beseech you not to judge me by it. I tell you that if you still love me, if you think that you can be happy with me, it will be the most joyous day of my life when I take your name and look upon you as my husband. And, Frank,’ she continued, in a still softer, more tremulous, and more murmuring voice, “remember that I have some claim alike upon your indul- gence and your love, for am not I already the same as your wife in the sight of Heaven? ”’ This last appeal completed the trouble and bewilderment which were influencing young Paton at the moment.’ He felt that it had gone to his very heart, that there was as much justice as there was truth in it, that he owed her forgiveness because he owed her reparation. Infatuated boy! He did not pause to reflect at the moment that it was not he who had seduced Miss Farefield from the path of virtue; it was she that seduced him. That he never should have dared to make the slightest overture to her, but that every encourage- ment and provocative had come from herself. Of all this he did not think; he heard the appeal, it murmured in his ears, it thrilled through his brain, it went down into his heart, it excited the most generous feelings of his soul. He | looked upon her as if she were a young creature who in all trusting love had surrendered up her honour into his keep- ing, and to whom he was bound to make every possible atonement. Juliana comprehended full well everything that was passing in his mind. She saw the advantage she had gained, and her bosom already swelled with the exulta- tion of approaching triumph, for she had rather, much rather, marry this youth who was the object of her passion, now that she knew him to be the son of a wealthy marquis, than she would wed George Hawkshaw, although the fortune of the latter might be greater than Frank could hope to receive from his sire. Another moment, and young Paton, forgetting his father, forgetting his mother, forgetting all their counsels, lost in° the intoxication of love, entangled in the maze of witcheries COnnIEDOOKS (S(O)