Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

- APPREHENSIONS Si “And pray, Mr. Gunthorpe,’ inquired Marston, with a sardonic smile upon his countenance, ‘ did Elizabeth make known to you the pleasant pursuits in which she has recently been engaged? ”’ “ What mean you, sir?”’ cried Mr. Gunthorpe, angrily. ‘“T have every reason to believe — “ Believe nothing without being convinced,” interrupted Marston. ‘‘ Here, take and read this document.”’ As he thus spoke, the baronet spread open the Dover newspaper before Mr. Gunthorpe and the old gentleman began to read the column pointed out to him. Gradually did a strange excitement come over him; he grew pale as death, subdued ejaculations escaped his lips, his agitation was extreme. Sir John Marston threw a significant look at Lord Petersfield, —a look in which a sardonic triumph was blended with a conviction of their own safety. Mr. Gunthorpe finished reading the report, drew his hand across his brow, as if with a pang of ineffable mental agony, and then looked at the paper again. He longed to start up in a fury and denounce the whole affair as a fraud or a delusion; he longed to proclaim his conviction that the Mrs. Chandos of Dover was not the Elizabeth in whom he was interested, and a different being from Mrs. Chandos the highway-woman. But when he reflected that from Henrietta’s lips he had heard how Elizabeth had appeared in male attire when she rescued that young girl from Beech- tree Lodge, he was staggered, he was confounded. And the description, too, which Marlow had given before the Dover magistrate of the female highwayman, tallied so completely with the portrait which the newspaper report drew of the Mrs. Chandos who appeared as a prisoner on the occasion that it was impossible to doubt. Even the extraordinary nature of the evidence given at that investi- gation before the mayor of Dover, though to all appearance establishing an alibi, could not possibly prove satisfactory to a man of Mr. Gunthorpe’s shrewdness and intelligence. Alas, yes! he could come to no other conclusion than the one fatal to the character of Elizabeth Paton. And this idea was sadly and terribly confirmed, when he recalled to mind her own words uttered to him ere now, that although as a woman she was pure and chaste, yet that her life had not been free from faults. The poor old gentleman was CORVICLOOC CS (FO)