The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

VALENTINE AND VENETIA 113 ing her hands as a troop of bitter memories swept through her brain, she cried, ‘‘ Oh, wherefore did I not know all this a year ago? It would have saved me from having become what I am.” “Then you are not happy, my dear sister? ’”’ asked Mal- vern, in a tone of the deepest interest. ‘“ Valentine,’’ returned Lady Sackville, ‘‘I should have been happier, far happier, had I remained virtuous. But it is now for me to give you certain explanations, and you will perceive that I am as much to be pitied as to be blamed. You know wherefore I came to London, and how bitterly, how cruelly, I was disappointed? This disappointment was the main cause that helped to place me in circumstances to the tide of which I was compelled to yield. I was hurried away by them — But listen, and I will give you the whole history in a continuous manner.” With these words Lady Sackville entered upon her ex- planations to the young baronet, and he listened with the deepest interest. She told him everything that had occurred to her during the first few months of her sojourn in London, — how she came to occupy Acacia Cottage, how she was led to marry Horace Sackville, and how they were elevated to the peerage and installed at Carlton House. She likewise told him various particulars relative to her sister, — that sister of whom they had ere now been speaking, and whom she represented as being engaged to marry a young nobleman of the highest character and the most exalted principles. But she did not explain to her half-brother how she had voluntarily abandoned herself to Sir Douglas Huntingdon, how she had been tricked into an amour with the Earl of Curzon, how she had been coerced by Colonel Malpas, and how circumstances had induced her to sell her charms to the Marquis of Leveson. No, all these profligacies and depravities she carefully concealed. She would sooner have perished than confess them; and as Valentine entertained not the faintest suspicion in those respects, there was no— necessity to make such confessions. Therefore, with regard to the dark side of her character, he saw her only as the mistress of the prince, and he pitied her, he compassionated her, for by the tale which she had told him and which was perfectly true so far as it went, he saw that she had indeed been hurried on by the current of a destiny which few (Cl) nn) GDoOo <Si in