The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 222: what you’re looking at

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

THE PREFECTURE OF POLICE 199 Loftus! ’? murmured Miss Linden, from the corner of the room into which she had shrunk. “ He will suspect some- thing, and all our hopes will be ruined.” “Good night, my friend,’’ said Loftus, speaking from the casement to the watchman below. ‘“ Your wishes shall immediately be complied with,” and having closed the win- dow, he blew out the candles. The room was now suddenly plunged into total darkness; and the reader will not require to be informed that Jocelyn was placed in a very singular and awkward predicament. There he was alone —in the utter obscurity and in the depth of the night — in a bedchamber with a young and no doubt beautiful woman, a situation in which most men would have envied him. But his own high principles of honour and integrity, his fidelity toward Louisa Stanley, amounting positively to a devotion and a worship, and like- wise the generous and manly considerations which he experienced on behalf of a young, eccentric, but heroic being whom circumstances had thus so suddenly thrown in his way, all these combined at once to raise him, as it were, above the embarrassment of his position and render him superior to its awkwardness, perplexity, and bewilderment. ‘“ Miss Linden,” he said, almost immediately, ‘‘ I am far more distressed on your account than on my own that this enterprise should have experienced so sudden a check, after all the anxiety, toil, and fatigue which you have undergone.” “Oh, that is nothing — nothing, Mr. Loftus,” she said, “provided success will smile upon the undertaking to- morrow night.” As she thus spoke our hero could judge by the sound of her voice, the slight rustling of her silk dress, and the gentle tread of her footsteps, that she was approaching toward him; and in a few moments he felt a hand laid gently upon his arm. “You are endowed with an extraordinary courage,” he observed, by way of response to her last observation. ‘Yes, it is indomitable, so long as it is sustained by the excitement of the enterprise,’ answered Laura; ‘“ but a reaction soon comes on, and then, alas! I melt into all a woman’s weakness. Guide me to a seat, Mr. Loftus, for a sudden faintness is coming over me,’’ she murmured, in a tone of tremulous entreaty; and at the same time she clung CONNIE OOO a ‘S (CO)