The Curse Upon Mitre Square — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

THE STOLEN MEETING, 21 The same black hair, the same aquiline nose and firmly sealed lips, and, still more remarkable, she had that habit of shielding the mouth before and after speech which he had so vainly tried to cure himself of when studying rhetoric. He asked her what she wanted of him, when, taking from her mantle a small scroll of parchment, she handed it to him, and bade him attend her on the morrow in the church of St. Catherine Cree hard by. Having delivered her message, the woman disappeared, leaving Martin astonished and nervous at so curious an interruption to his meditation. The monk felt it his duty to take no notice of the summons and destroy the scroll, but he was seized with overmastering curiosity to read it, and then determined to attend the woman on the morrow—a fatal resolve, pregnant with terribie consequences to himself, and still more terrible consequences to others. On the following day the inhabitants of the gabled houses, ever on the alert whenever the doings of their mysterious neighbour were concerned, descried her again leaving her home with her companion, and this time they resolved that the pair should not escape them. The saddle and trappings had given rise to great discussion, and more than one person had suggested a name for the owner, but the discus- sions were conducted in secret, a necessary precau- tion in those troubled times. The liberty of the subject was little understood in those days, the power of the king was almost unlimited, the Court (E(o) Af Gomichbooks