The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

134 THE COURT OF LONDON well might she have remained in the one whence she has just succeeded in escaping. | A species of ladder, or rough ascent of steps, catches her eye. Joy! joy! her calculation was correct, the hope which she had entertained is fulfilled, the means of flight are there. Up that ladder she climbs, her little feet scarcely touching the steps, so glancingly do they move over them. She raises a trap-door, she enters the loft at the top of the house, — that loft whence she knows there is a means of escape pro- vided, in case of fire. And now the glance which she flings behind her shows her the prince just at the moment that he reaches the foot of the ladder. She lets the trap-door fall, she stoops and feels for a bolt, the loft being nearly dark; but there is no fastening, and, without wasting another instant, she sweeps her eyes along the interior of the sloping roof. Her glance catches a pensile streak of light gleaming through a crevice; it is a trap-door which opens on to the top of the dwelling. But it is fastened, and she loses a few moments in drawing back the rusty bolt. At length it yields, and she climbs through that trap-door opening on to the roof, just at the moment that the prince enters the loft from the trap-door at the summit of the ladder. The maiden pauses on the giddy height, and her looks are averted shudderingly from the yawning depth beneath, for a low parapet running along the top of the house alone stands between her feet and destruction. One moment’s giddiness, one false step, and down, down would she fall into the paved yard which separates the back of the house in Pall Mall from the back of that in St. James’s Square. She paused, we say, for an instant as she stepped forth upon the roof, and almost immediately the prince appeared at the trap-door. Then Rose Foster stepped from the sloping roof on to the parapet, at the same instant that the prince sprang forth on the tilings. “Rose, dearest Rose, in the name of God, come back,”’ he cried, in a tone so changed by dread horror that it seemed like the voice of an old man of eighty. “No, ’tis for you to go back,’”’ exclaimed the intrepid girl, every lineament of her ashy pale countenance express- ing desperate resolution; “‘ for if you advance another step, (Gx @) mG 6)(0)()