The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

106 REYNOLDS’ WORKS engaged in his avocations he was abstracted, and performed them only in a sort of mechanical manner. At five he retraced his way to Mr. Chubb’s, wondering whether he should be enabled to obtain a few minutes’ inter- view with Isabella, in which case he was more than half- resolved to throw himself at her feet and avow his love; for it had now assumed all the pure passion and chaste fervour of romance. But as he entered the street, he beheld a car- riage, with livery servants in attendance, standing at the door of the parish clerk’s house. A man came out, leading Isabella by the hand, and that man was the same with the sinister countenance whom Christian had seen on the pre- ceding day. He assisted Isabella to enter the carriage, he himself immediately afterward ascending to the box, and taking his seat as a menial or dependent by the side of the fat, gorgeously liveried, powdered coachman. The equipage drove away in the contrary direction from that whence Christian was advancing, and he stopped short, smitten with grief as well as with a bewilderment amounting almost to dismay. Isabella was gone; she had not observed him, or if she did notice his presence in the street, she had not dared bestow even a parting look upon him. She was gone, and she was borne away under circumstances which only added to the mystery already enveloping her. She had taken her departure in a splendid equipage, and the man who had come to fetch her was evidently a menial. If Christian’s soul were susceptible of any consolation under this infliction, it was to be found in the fact that his mind was relieved from the apprehension that the sinister-looking individual was in any way connected by the bonds of kinship with the beautiful Isabella. For nearly a minute did the youth stand in the street, a dozen yards distant from the spot where the carriage had just driven off. He felt as if a dreadful calamity had suddenly overtaken him, as if a gulf had abruptly opened, separating him from the object of his love. At length he moved slowly onward to the parish clerk’s house. Mrs. Chubb herself answered his summons at the front door, and begged him to step into the parlour. “Well, Mr. Ashton,” she exclaimed, ‘ here’s a pretty business! I’ve lost the young lady and the guinea a week that was paid for her board and lodging, and all through you.” GOmichdooks com