The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

SIR. RICHARD STAMFORD 105 all was silent. The villains had evidently retired. How was I to act? I was bewildered, stunned, stupefied. Should I return home, and wreak my vengeance upon my wife? No, I could not harm her, guilty though she were; for her beautiful image floated with supplicating eyes before me! But I felt that to forgive her were impossible. And then those two miscreants — how was I to act toward them? Oh, it was easy to decide that point; I was a magistrate, and could myself issue warrants for their apprehension. This I resolved to do in the morning, for I was too heart- sick, too much exhausted with mental anguish, and too deeply overwhelmed with ineffable woe, to take any de- liberate step that night. It was twelve o’clock when I reached the manor; and the servant who opened the door to admit me into the house stated that Mr. Ramsey had been waiting for the last two hours to see me. An un- natural composure took possession of me. I cannot account for it, but such was the fact; and I resolved to hear all that my villainous partner might have to say before I proclaimed how much I knew. I entered the dining-room, where my wife was seated on one side of the supper-table and Ramsey on the other. I threw myself upon a chair with no affected exhaustion, but a real weariness alike of mind and body; and Lady Stamford inquired what had detained me at Aylesbury so long. I observed that there was a subdued anxiety and a tremulousness in her voice, and when I endeavoured to speak, my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. Ramsey remarked upon the love- liness of the night, which was of frosty clearness and moonlit; and he asked me to walk out with him into the shrubbery, as he wished to converse with me upon matters of great importance. It flashed to my mind all in a moment that he sought to inveigle me into some snare, — perhaps to put into execution the mysterious scheme against me at which he and Martin had so darkly hinted, — and my blood, an instant before so sluggish, began to circulate like thrilling electricity in my veins. Starting from my seat, I poured forth the most bitter invectives alike against Ramsey and Lady Stamford. Did my life depend upon it I could not now recapitulate all that I then said; but I recollect that in a few hasty and cutting words I revealed enough to convince the guilty pair that everything was discovered. With (C(O) AAI Doo (C(O)