The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

MORE MYSTIFICATION 97 and if so, to what extent? These were the particulars which the Earl of Curzon was desirous to ascertain; and therefore, after a hurried breakfast, did he mount his horse, and, attended by his groom, repair to the money-making regions of the City. | Mr. Emmerson was seated alone in his private office in Nicholas Lane, pondering somewhat gloomily on the occur- rences of the preceding night, and wondering what on earth had been the issue of the adventure. From Editha’s lips he had hurriedly heard how her husband had returned and had found the packet of forged bills in her desk, and in a few hastily exchanged sentences they had agreed upon the outline of some tale, to be told by himself, should the earl call on him to demand any explanation of the circumstance of his name being on the back of those forged bills. But whether this story, so hurriedly and imperfectly concocted, would serve any purpose at all, even if the earl should call on him, or whether the discoveries made by his lordship were of too serious and comprehensive a nature to be ex- plained away by sophistry or accounted for by artifice, these were the uncertainties between which Mr. Emmerson was painfully hovering at the moment when the office-boy entered to announce the Earl of Curzon. Emmerson could not help trembling from head to foot through fear of detection, exposure, and chastisement. But not suffering his emotions to be perceived, he bade the boy at once introduce his lordship. Then, as the earl made his appearance, extending his hand with a sort of affable condescension and aristocratic patronage toward him, he felt persuaded that whatever might have been the issue of the previous night’s adventure, he himself remained un- suspected. ‘Pray sit down, my lord,” said Emmerson, bustling about to hand the nobleman a chair. ‘ Will your lordship take a glass of wine and a biscuit? It is just twelve o’clock, and though perhaps not lunch-time in the fashionable regions whence your lordship has just come — ”’ “Thank you, Emmerson,” said the earl, carelessly. “ [have not long breakfasted. But what news in the City? ”’ “ Why, would your lordship believe it, that conceited little humbug, Mr. Undersheriff Fire, has actually got made an alderman; and Tibbs, who has so long managed the CoOnniclooolks (C(O)