The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

78 THE COURT OF LONDON that sleep there is to be no waking. The frightful deed is done, and forth from that room goes the duke, a murderer. Ay, and what is more, too, he must have been a cold-blooded assassin, for on his return to his own room, he had the pres- ence of mind to perform the part which was to give a colour and complexion to the whole affair, — I mean those wounds which he must have inflicted upon himself — ”’ “But the medical evidence,”’: interrupted Mrs. Bredal- bane, “‘ proved that the wounds were serious.”’ | “Granting that they were,’ rejoined Mrs. Arbuthnot, ‘“ may we not suppose that the duke inflicted them a little more severely than he perhaps intended? Or that, being a bold and desperate man, he calculated full well that the more severely he punished himself the more certain was he to avert suspicion from his own door? Or again, the medical evidence may have been exaggerated and overstrained.”’ “Ts it not an awful subject? ”’ asked Mrs. Bredalbane, as she replaced the unfinished letter of the murdered Sellis in her writing-desk. : ‘It is a tremendous and a fearful episode in the history of the royal family,’’ replied Mrs. Arbuthnot, “‘ and I think that you now will be more than ever cautious how you appease the curiosity of the Princess Charlotte.”’ | ‘ comicloooks CO