Excerpt from Pen Sketches by a Vanished Hand, Vol. 2 of 2: From the Papers of the Late Mortimer Collins Indeed, to make him of weak fibre was a necessity of the story, since no man of resolute will would have been so easy a prey to either priests or conspirators. Nor is the heroine, Lady Corisande (a name of the Gramont), any more than a fashionable young lady fulfilling regularly the sole duties of her station - elle s'habille, elle babille, elle se deshabille. Almost all the other dramatis persona}, however slightly introduced, are vivid and intelligible pictures, so that the negative shadowy aspect of hero and heroine strikes one somewhat strangely. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.