The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

128 THE COURT OF LONDON confidence, that Mr. Dysart’s arrest took place at Beechey Manor in consequence of an anonymous letter sent early the same morning to Bow Street, and which was instantane- ously placed by the magistrate in my hands.” ‘An anonymous letter! ’’ exclaimed Ernestina, with well- affected surprise and indignation. ‘Yes, here it is,’ said Larry Sampson, as he produced her own note and handed it to her, — that same note which she had despatched by old Underdown to the office at Bow Street, as the reader cannot fail to remember. She took it with trembling hands and pale countenance; and as she pretended to run her eyes over its contents — those well-known contents — she made a desperate struggle to regain her courage. ‘Your ladyship may well be annoyed,’ observed Sampson, for even the astute and cunning officer was liable to mistake the causes of emotion and excitement now and then. ‘‘ You are disgusted at the treachery practised by the anonymous correspondent, and you are shocked at observing the hand- writing to be that of a lady, and evidently an accomplished one.”’ | ‘“ Ah! Dysart has proved false to me, and it is doubtless his mistress who thus betrayed him,” cried Ernestina, with all the appearance of the most genuine anguish. “ But what has this to do with the disappearance of Sir Archibald Malvern? ” “7 will tell your ladyship. This evening Mr. Valentine Malvern called upon me, as he often does, to inquire whether I had made any progress in my researches. I received him in a room where a number of papers lay scattered upon a table. This letter was unguardedly left amongst them; in fact, it lay open. His eye happened to catch a glimpse of it; he seized it, greedily devoured its contents, examined the writing with the utmost attention, and then cried out, ‘ Yes, ’tis the same, ’tis the same!’ To be brief, he explained to me that amongst his father’s papers he had some weeks back discovered a note in a beautiful female hand, but without date, address, or signature, and the contents of which, though worded with a caution amounting to ambiguity, indicated a gallant intrigue. The handwriting of that tender epistle and of this anonymous letter are the same, and Mr. Valentine Malvern had instantaneously recognized the fact. CONNIE LICKO_ KS, (E)