The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 357: what you’re looking at

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

A NIGHT AT OAKLANDS 335 in a cloak, and holding the cloak in such a way up to his countenance as to veil it completely from my view.” Here the duke again stopped short, leaving Purvis in a species of awful suspense. “And what did your Grace do?” he at length asked as the duke continued silent. “To confess the truth, Purvis,” was the response, “ I was seized — or rather fancied I was, — for of course it was all a dream, — but it appeared to me in this dream that I was seized with so sudden a terror I lay like one paralyzed. It was that sort of petrifaction of the frame, though the senses were all keenly alive, which takes possession of one when under the influence of a nightmare. Then that dark shape seemed to bend down over me. Is it not extraordinary, Purvis? But if I were to tell you all, you would agree with me that it cannot be anything else than mere fancy? ” But the Duke of Marchmont was still in such a state of trembling nervousness that his condition, both physical and mental, proved how impossible it was to beguile himself into the belief that it was a dream, for again he rose from his seat, again he paced to and fro in an agitated manner, and then he sat down once more. ‘A form bent, I say,” he continued, still irresistibly impelled to hover around the subject, like a moth fluttering about a candle, — ‘it bent over me,— of course in my dream, you understand? — and it spoke a few words in such a deep, unearthly voice that the blood ran cold in my veins. No matter what it said; I forget—I did not hear—I could not for worlds repeat it. Perdition seize upon me! I am losing my senses.”’ The duke stamped his foot violently upon the floor as he gave vent to that imprecation, and again springing up from the chair, he paced nervously to and fro. The old steward was seriously alarmed, for he began to suspect that his master’s intellects had received a shock and were somewhat deranged. He had not failed to notice the extraordinary and incongruous expressions which had fallen from his lips in regard to the words breathed in his ear by the tall cloaked form that either in imagination or in reality had bent over him. And now too Marchmont’s face was ghastly pale and as convulsed as it was when he first entered the cham- ber, and the old steward tremblingly asked whether he CORNICLOO SS (E) im