The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 293: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXIX THE EARL’S LAST ACT OF REPARATION On the same day and at about the same hour when the preceding incidents occurred, an event of a most serious nature took place at Stamford Manor in the vicinage of Aylesbury. The weather was remarkably fine, indeed it was the most splendid day which had yet gladdened the spring of 1795. All around the manor the scenery was beautiful beyond description, exhibiting every diversity of floral colouring in the gardens and every varied shade of green in the fields. There were the bright meadows of emerald hue,fand there were the woodlands of a deeper tinge; while the dark hedges stretched out their tracery like veins upon the ample surface of the sunny pasture lands. There, like a broad ribbon of glittering silver, meandered the pellucid stream; and the fields, densely studded with buttercups, appeared like a green carpet all shining with an embroidery of gold. The feathered choristers filled the warm sunny air with their tuneful notes, the lambs frisked in the meadows, and all nature, animate or inanimate, was full of cheerfulness, fresh- ness, and beauty. In the gardens of Stamford Manor the Earl and Countess of Desborough were walking. They were not arm in arm; but side by side did they slowly thread the bright gravel- paths that were bordered by beds of shining foliage and by parterres of flowers. Nor did they look at each other, but their eyes were bent downward, and everything denoted a painful reserve and constraint which hung most oppressively about the manner, the regards, the demeanour, and the very gait and gestures of both. Yet no quarrel had taken place between them, 262 Gomichsooks (E(O)