The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

Serer THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. 97 eis ‘* My dear Clarine,” she said, “you are in euch a frame of mind that I do not like to leave you by yourself for #0 many long, long hours. There is always consolation in the companionship of friendship: suffer me to pass the night with Lad you Sudden was the start, and for an instant sin- gular and unaccountable was the look, with which Clarine received that kindly meant proposition: then, the next moment winding her arms about Zoe's neck, she murmured, “ No, my dear friend! Think me not ungrateful—think not that I fail to @ppreciate your generous kindness: but it will be better for me to be alone with my own thoughtse— to commune with myself—and to study well the pathway which I have henceforth to pursue |” “I beseech you, Clarine,” persisted Zoe, “to grant me my request. The night is gloomy—the weather has changed since the morning—the wind and when the mind is attenuated by sorrowful thoughte——” “Ob, I have no superstitious terrors!” ejacu- lated Clarine quickly. “A thousand thanks, my dear friend, for your kindness—a thousand thanks! —but I will pass the night alone——And perhaps to-morrow—to-morrow,” she repeated, with a singularly anguished and abstracted look, “I shall be more resigned—I shall be all the better pre- pared to meet my sad, sad destiny |” For an instant it struck Zoe that there was s:mething peculiar—something unnatural or at all events incomprebensibly mysterious in Clarine’s look and manner, as well as in her tone: but when Mademoiselle Volney had embraced her and hurried forth from the apartment, Lady Octavian thought within herself, “It is the bitterness of ber affliction which renders her thus strange. Alas! grief does indeed at times produce eccentric is moaning round and through the old Chatenu; | aberrations of the reasun; and, poor Clarine! she No. 65.—F7OURTH SERIES eee comicibooks.conm