Excerpt from A Terrible Temptation: A Story of the Day The morning-room of a large house in Portman Square, London. A gentleman in the prime of life stood with his elbow on the broad mantel-piece, and made himself agreeable to a young lady, seated a little way off, playing at work. To the ear he was only conversing but his eyes dwelt on her with loving admiration all the time. Her posture was favorable to' this furtive inspection, for she leaned her fair head over her work with a pretty, modest, demure air, that seemed to say, I suspect I am being admired: I will not look to see; I might have to check it. The gentleman's features were ordinary, except his brow - that had power in it but he had the beauty of color; his sunburnt features glowed with health, and his eye was bright. On the whole. Rather good-looking when he smiled, but ugly when he frowned; for his frown was a scowl, and betrayed a remarkable power of hating. 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.