The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

TUE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. 5 elapsed since he was discarded, he had 900/. to re-| The reader is already aware that three children esive. Forgetting for the moment his thoughts of | were the fruit of her marriage with Lord Saxondale. vengeance, he plunged headlong once more into dis- | The two eldest were girls, and were respectively sipation : but he was shortly startled from his de-| christened Juliana and Constance: the last-born, baucheries by the astounding intelligence that Lady | now a couple of months old, was named Edmund. Saxondale was a third time a mother—and on this | In respect to the infant babe, we must observe that occasion had presented her husband with a son. | he was marked on the shoulder with a strawberry. Ralph Farefield was cunsequently no longer the heir | This mark was but very small: still in its diminutive to a lordly title and vast estate: but then, as he ob- | proportions it bore an extraordinary resemblance to served to his dissolute associates, “it was but a| the above-named fruit; and of course the old nurse, miserable new-born babe that stood between him | the female servants, and the gossips of the nei¢h- and the hope of still inheriting the ancestral wealth | bourhood, were positive in declaring that Lady and honours.” Saxondale must have longed for strawberries ere the We have now explained to the reader how it was | birth of her son. Be this as it may—it is not the and under what peculiar circumstances the venera- | less eertain that the mark was there, upon the child’s ble Lord Saxondale contracted a second marriage at | shoulder; and her ladyship congratulated herself the age of sixty. Four years had elapsed since the | that it was thus upon a part of the body where it day when he led Harriet Clifton to the altar; and | could not be considered a disfigurement. he was consequently now sixty-four. This was the} Such was the exact position of affairs with regard year 1825, when in the earlier part of the chapter | to the Saxondale family in the middle of the year we first introduced his lordship to the reader. Lady | 1828, at which date our narrative opened. Saxondale was at this time a splendid woman; and she filled her exalted position with as much grace- ful dignity as if she had been from her very birth CHAPTER II reared in the atmosphere of aristocracy and fashion. Not once did the old nobleman regret having mar- ; - THE CRIME. ried her: for not merely was his vindictive feeling against his nephew at length gratified by the birth ; RatPaH FaREFIELD was, as we have already ob- of an heir, but he had also experienced much real’ served, startled from what may be termed the domestic happiness in his recurrence to a wedded lethargy of a continuous debauch, upon receiving state. For, as he had foreseen, his wite regarded the intelligence that’ Lady Saxondale had presented him with gratitude as the author of the brilliant her husband with a son and heir. I1e sud:lenly be- position to which she had been raised; and though came an altered man; and throwing aside his dissi« she could not positively love a man old enough to be pated habits, as he would a garment which he had her grandfather, nor indeed had a heart susceptible , worn long enough, he began not merely to deliberate of the tender feeling at all, yet she behaved towards with calmness, but also to act with decision. Lis him with kindness, and was ever solicitous for his ' acquaintance with the low dens of debauchery in comfort and well-being. Lady Saxondale was a, London had taught him where, in case of need, le woman of passions, but not of sentiments: the former could lay his hands upon the desperate charactcrs were strong 1m proportion as they occupied the place | suited to his purpose: and these he was not long in which the latter ought to have held in her soul ;—_ finding out. In the first instance he despatched a and those passions being egotistical and selfish, as secret emissary down into Lincolnshire, who was ia- all passions necessarily are, were equally capable of; structed to prowl about Saxondale Castle and take prompting her to gencrous and good actions as toa note of any circumstanecs which might tend to for- course the very reverse. Circumstances had there- ward the scheme that Ralph Farefielt had in view. fore favoured the former alternative ; and as she was This was nothing more nor less than to carry off the ambitious, she felt grateful to the man who had infant Edmund, and make away with him. Tne ministered to her ambition. She now felt, too, that | emissary was accordingly instructed to watch when she occupied the proud position of the mother of that | the child was taken out for an airing —where it was heir to whom her husband’s title and estates would | so taken—by whom—and w hether its nurse ever fall; and also cherishing the hope that there was | walked to any distance trom the ima:nediate precincts but little chance of these estates passing away from | of the castle. The min whom Ralph employed on her own offspring, she felt a pride in contemplating | this service, was astute, ¢: inning, and wary; anil the responsibility connected with her position. | promised to fulfil bis mission with despatch and These feelings not merely made her cherish the | fidelity. husband who had given her this position and had} Proflizate and unprincipled as Ralph Farefie! | invested her as it were with this proud responsi- | was—bitter as were his vindictive feelings against, bility, but they also imparted a certain matronly | his uncle, and his hatred for Lady Saxondale—deep sedateness to her mind and demeanour; so that at | too as was the stake which he had to play —he one-and-twenty, Lady Saxondale, while still in the | nevertheless recoiled from the idea of committing bloom of youthful beauty, possessed the experience | murder with his own hand. He shrank thus, not aud bore the air of a woman of several years older. | merely from that instinctive horror of sheddiny But lest we should be misunderstood in any portion | blood, which, when the i lea is first conceived, seizes of these remarks, we must observe, that the lapse of | upon even the most unprincipled and unserupulous, those four years since her marriage, so far from hav- | but he was hkewise afraid of involving himself in ing ip any way marred her loy eliness, had tended | the tremmels of the law. His plan therefore was to erly to develop her charms to the height of their | consummate the entire iniquity, not with his own splendour, and to convert a precocious girlhood into | hands, but through the medium of agents; and as ® grand and magnificent womanhood, | he purposed to remain to Loudon and show himsell _— oe Se A le Shp — —— eee eee _ — GoOnniGsooks (CO)