The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 256: what you’re looking at

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

234 THE COURT OF LONDON valid’s chamber. Lady Ernestina was now asleep, but the marquis sat down by her bedside, watching for her to awake. The nurse and lady’s-maid were both in the room, the former dozing in a great armchair, the latter treading about on tiptoe, putting things to rights. Several bottles of medicine were upon the mantel, and there was every indication about the apartment to show that Ernestina was really very ill. The marquis, sitting himself down by the bedside, gazed upon her long and mournfully. She was frightfully altered. But a few days had elapsed since, through the fearful out- rages of the Hangman, she had been stretched upon that sick-bed, and yet it seemed as if the ravages of years had wreaked upon her their searing, scathing, blighting ills. The natural plumpness of her flesh had yielded to haggard- ness of the countenance and emaciation of the person. Her cheeks were sunken and ghastly, her eyes were surrounded by a deep blue tint, her nose was thin and pointed, her lips were well-nigh colourless, the splendour of the bust was disappearing rapidly. And all this was the work of a few short days. The very room seemed to be filled with the atmosphere of death, and as the marquis sat contemplating the wreck which his niece had become, and thought of the ruin, too, which she must remain, even if she recovered from this dangerous illness, certain compunctious feelings crept into his heart. For here we must observe that, having in the first instance learned from her ravings enough to make him suspect the nature of the outrage which she had received at the hands of the Hangman, he had subsequently questioned her, when alone with her, and in one of her lucid intervals, relative to the fearful secret which seemed to weigh upon her mind. Then was it that in the bitterest agonies of mingled grief and horror and self-loathing she had confessed all to him. Now, therefore, as he sat gazing upon her, he thought that if after her husband’s death upon the scaffold he had removed her to one of his country-seats, and there remained to watch over her and save her from pursuing the career of profligacy on which she had then already entered, he might have averted all these evils beneath the weight of which she was now succumbing. But instead of doing that he had allowed her to remain at Leveson House, within those walls which contained the apartments filled with pictorial comicloooks (C(O) im