The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

AT LASCELLES’ MANSION 149 risen to prepare notes and memoranda to serve as a guide for his literary occupations by the time his secretary should arrive. Full of his newly concocted anecdote — to which he mentally added a few embellishing exaggerations as he threaded the passages toward the apartments above alluded to — the earl reached the door, and without the ceremony of knocking, he walked in. Oh, incautious Ethel, to have left that door unlocked. It was a sad oversight, but if such oversights never took place the chapters of romance would lose half their charm, actions for crim. con. much of their piquancy, and the public curiosity no mean portion of the food which occasionally gratifies it. The door was left un- locked, then, and as the earl entered, he might have been knocked down with a straw — redoubtable, according to his own account, though he was —.on beholding a female figure at the window half-clasped in the arms of a young gentleman on the opposite side, and who seemed as if having just leaped out, he was taking a farewell kiss of the beau- teous frail one. That this latter was his wife and the other his son Lord Osmond, the earl had not a doubt, though a sort of dimness immediately came over his vision. He stopped short; he tried to roar out something, but he could not; his powers of utterance seemed suffocated. All that he could do was to raise his clenched fist, and shake it in speechless, impotent rage; then in total bewilderment he turned from the room, not thinking of closing the door behind him, and scarcely knowing whether he was walking on his head or his feet. At that same instant Lord Osmond was stricken with dismay on catching a glimpse of his father’s form ere it dis- appeared by the doorway. The countess beheld the change which suddenly came over the young nobleman’s counte- nance, and the abruptness too with which he retreated from her arms. She also was seized with consternation, and a few hurried words on Osmond’s part confirmed all her worst and wildest fears. Good heavens! what was to be done? This was the question they both with simultaneous rapidity put mentally, and which the next moment they orally asked each other. Ethel was sinking with affright; visions of fearful exposure, of infamy and disgrace, were sweeping like vultures through her brain, when Osmond, suddenly CORNICLOO SS (E() mM