The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 213: what you’re looking at

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

THE PREFECTURE OF POLICE 195. tones of her musical voice; ‘‘ but it is in consequence of a solemn vow which I have made.” ‘A vow? ” exclaimed Loftus, in astonishment, and almost with an accent of incredulity and suspicion. ‘Yes, it is a vow,’ answered the lady, with a certain dignity in her tone and a drawing up of her form as if she resented the incredulous manner of our hero, “‘ a vow rashly and precipitately made, it is true, a vow pledged in the moment of despair, but to which I am not the less bound to pay implicit devotion.”’ ‘‘ But wherefore so singular a vow?” inquired Jocelyn, now fancying that if the lady were not some adventuress, she was probably of unsettled intellects. “ You think that I am mad?” she said, thus evidently penetrating his thoughts once more, but now speaking in a milder and more mournful tone. “It would be perhaps a blessing for one so profoundly acquainted with sorrow as I am to sink into the oblivion of a benighted intellect, or be- come a prey to the fanciful vagaries of dreams. But, alas! alas! life has already been and still is too stern a reality for me. Under such circumstances, and considering the absolute necessity which exists for me to give you some explanation, so as to convince you that you are not em- barking in this night’s enterprise with either an adventuress imprisoned for wrong-doing, or a mad woman confined on account of her malady, for these reasons, I say, you will not deem me vain or frivolous in declaring that it is the beauty of this now veiled countenance which has been the cause of all my misfortunes. Yes, that beauty which, I solemnly declare, I myself value not, has rendered me the object of persecution and even of vengeance on the part of a host of great, noble, and powerful admirers to whose honeyed words I would not listen. Being my own mistress, or I should rather say, being a friendless Englishwoman, thus tormented by a hornet’s nest of French princes, dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons, — ay, and by even the very prefect himself,’’ she added, with a bitter significancy of tone and with a gesture of deep meaning, ‘‘ I have passed through an ordeal — ”’ | ‘“ Ah! then it is because you would not listen to the over- tures of all those great personages, but the prefect espe- cially,’’ exclaimed Loftus, now believing the tale and becom- COMMNICOOO (CO) mM