The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

158 .. REYNOLDS’ WORKS — jealousy in respect to Lord Osmond. He had often noticed. the young nobleman, the countess, and Isabella walking together in the grounds, and had invariably seen that while Osmond and Ethel kept together, Isabella would either linger behind, or else walk by the side of the countess and not by that of her cousin Adolphus. Thus, although Christian felt tolerably well certain that Lord Osmond was not think-. ing of paying his addresses to Isabella, yet on the other hand his naturally pure mind suspected not for an instant the criminal intimacy which subsisted between that young nobleman and his beauteous mother-in-law. We may here observe too that Isabella — even more femininely chaste- souled than one of the opposite sex could possibly be — was equally far from imagining that an unholy passion subsisted on the part of her uncle’s wife and son. Two or three weeks more passed away, and during this interval Christian frequently dined at the earl’s table. Lord Osmond and the countess were perfectly well aware of the motive for which he was thus brought into their society, and treated as an equal in the little family circle, for Make- peace, whom the five hundred guineas had bought entirely over to Lord Osmond’s interest, had failed not to inform the young nobleman of his father’s delectable scheme. Isabella imagined that her uncle was merely displaying these civilities toward Christian in consequence of a disinterested esteem for the youth’s merits, while Christian himself continued as much in the dark as ever in respect to the whole proceeding on the part of his noble employer. E@NMMICOOOKS COM