The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 275: what you’re looking at

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

THE INTERVIEW 255 and it was here that they now separated. Isabella, again taking her cousin’s arm, accompanied him and the countess back to the mansion in one direction, while our young hero, hastily threading his way along the shady avenue, regained the garden gate, whence he issued, locking it again and taking the key with him. Had not his thoughts been entirely wrapped up in the ecstatic luxury of feeling which this interview had left behind it, he would most probably have been struck by a certain strange rustling amidst the adjacent evergreens, but as it happened, he heard it not. Meanwhile the Ear! of Lascelles had retired to the library to make notes of whatsoever perilous escapes or marvellous adventures he could possibly concoct, and which were worthy of incorporation in those celebrated memoirs that were to throw Baron Munchausen into the shade. He, however, found his imagination more cloudy than he had expected; he rang for wine, but fresh potations appeared only to in- crease his dulness, instead of giving a spur to his inventive ingenuity. Thus an hour elapsed, and he had only got so far as to place himself between the fore paws of a huge African lion, without being enabled to resolve upon the special means of his own extrication and his formidable adversary’s defeat. He sat back in his chair, thinking, but gradually with his meditations there became mingled an undercurrent of thoughts which presently absorbed the others. This ramble in the garden assumed a suspicious aspect to his mind. He did not know what it could possibly mean, and yet he could not help thinking it meant something more than a mere stroll for the purpose of courting the evening breeze. Without entering into details in respect to the old nobleman’s ideas, we may as well at once state that his misgivings reached such a pitch he tossed down the pen, left himself, so far as his memoirs were concerned, in the grasp of the lion, with a boa-constrictor picturesquely thrown in, and represented as looking down from a tree ready to spring upon them both, and issuing from the library, he stole into the garden, treading noiselessly amongst the evergreens. He drew near that very identical arbour where he had surprised Christian and Isabella, and where he had received so smart a blow upon the nose, but all was silent there. He diverged elsewhere, and now his wandering steps brought him in the immediate vicinage of the private door. Footsteps rapidly CORNICLOO SS (CE) im