The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 362: what you’re looking at

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306 THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. haughtily spurning the bare idea, “ My interests in any way common with your own?” “JT will soon make it apparent,’ answered Madame Angelique. “ Listen attentively. The Lady Indora has already begun to wreak her ven- geance upon me—it matters not how—but I have the positive proof that it is so:’—and she shud- dered as she thought of Mr. Shadbolt. ‘‘ This being the case, there can be no doubt that the Lady Indora will go on persecuting me; and even if she be desirous te remain in the background, she can induce Miss Ashton to take legal pro- ecedings of a very serious character against me.” “ And in what does all this concern me ?” asked Sagoonah, with scornful impatience. ‘ Because I have consented to listen to you on furmer occa- sions—to aid your projects—-and even to appear to become the instrument for carrying out your views, think you that I will any more mix myself up with the concerns of one whose artifices are so clumsily arranged that they invariably fail? Look at your poltroon Duke who feared to seize upon the golden opportunity—look at your own scheme of last night, which the merest accident—a col- lision ot vehicles—served to baffle! No—I will have naught more to do with you or your con- cerns, until you show yourself worthy of my com- plicity by removing this girl Ashton from within the walls of the villa.” “I will speedily convince you, Sagoonah,” re- sumed Madame Angelique, who had listened with the utmost icipatience to that long speech which was coldly but disdainfully uttered —“I will speedily convince you that your interests are more intimately wrapped up in mine than you appear to imagine. What if the Lady Indora continues her persecutions against me—whatif in the course of a few days, when the legal machinery is set in motion, she hands me over to the grasp of justice think you that in order to let myself down as lightly as possible, I would not tell all ?” “Ab! now I understand you,” exclaimed Sa- goonah, her large luminous eyes flashing forth living fires. “You would betray me to my mis- tress? And if you did so,” continued the Hindoo woman, bending a look of mingled scorn and hate upon Madame Angelique, “ think you that I would not be avenged? Yes!—ainto the depths of what- soever dungeon.the arm of the law might consign you to, would I penetrate—and my dagger should drink your heart’s blood!” “For which deed you would hang upon a gibbet,” replied Madame Angelique. ‘“ But it is useless—worse than useless—for you and me to stand here threatening each other. At all events we now understand one another; and I have shown you that your own interests are more intimately connected with mine than you had previously imagined.” Sagoonah reflected for. a few moments; and then she said in a low voice full of concentrated rage—but a rage which was altogether subdued so far as the expression of her countenance was con- cerned,—“ Yes! if you, to help yourself, in the case supposed, were to prove thus treacherous, it | would go ill with me. Now, woman, what mean your” asked Sagoonah sternly. “You have sought me with some fixed plan—you have some- ee settled in your mind. Speak quickly—what is 16 P” “The Lady Indora must die!” _ answered’ Madame Angelique, in a low, deep, emphatic voice. “ And you mean to add that she must die by my hand?” said Sagoonah. “ But it cannot be? Enough has already transpired to the knowledge of Christina Ashton to make her fix the deed upon me if it were accomplished.” “ What if I were to place in your hand a subtle poison ?” said Madame Angelique: and she looked up with a sinister aspect into the countenance of the ayah, who bent over the palings. “ No—nothing, nothing, so long as the girl Ashton is beneath that roof,’ replied Sagoonah firmly. “She sleeps lightly—she has already more than once detected me in wandering about the premises by night—she has seen me enter the chamber of my mistress—and she impressively told me that the silent hours of darkness are those which Murder chooses wherein to do its dreadful work.” “Ah! she has said that P” muttered Madame Angelique, with a look of mingled terror and vexation. ‘“‘'Yes—she has said that,’ responded Sagoonah impressively : “and think you therefore that if a suspicious deed were done by night within those walls, the Christian girl would not at once lay her hand upon my shoulder, and say, ‘It is you who did it!’ No, woman !” continued Sagoonah, “ my hand shall not wield the weapon, nor pour the drop of poison between the lips of my mistress, so long as Christina Ashton is there, and in a posi- tion to surrender me up to justice. If we were in mine own country it would be different; and I should defy her. For there the deed might be done under such circumstances as would com- pletely avert suspicion from myself—aye, even though in my former conduct there had been any- thing suspicious! Yes—were we in mine own native Hindostan,”’ proceeded the ayah, now speak- ing as if musing with herself rather than actually addressing her observations to Madame Angelique, “this hand of mine would convey to the couch of my mistress some reptile of deadly venom, whose fangs would instil the quick poison into her veins, and whose form would be found coiled up in the morning upon the bosom of its victim !” “And you would do this if you were in India ?” sald Madame Angelique, whose imagination was horribly prolific in all vile expedients: “ you would do this, Sagoonah P” ; “ Aye, I would do it,” was the response: “ be- cause the presence of the reptile would tell its own tale—and no one would ask whether it had been conveyed by a human hand to the couch to which if brought death—or whether it had in- sidiously glided in and nestled there of its own accord. But in this country of yours you have no such venomous things that may be caught in any patch of grass, found amidst the foliage of any tree, or snatched up from the midst of any par- terre of flowers.” “But if I told you, Sagoonah,” said Madame Angelique, a devilish idea, which had already taken inception in her mind, expanding quickly there,—“if I told you where in this city of ours there are kept the deadliest specimens of your own reptile races to gratify the curiosity of visitors —would you have the courage But, no ! it is i CORMIELAC VC) (C S (C©)