The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

MORE MYSTIFICATION 99 me with the forgery, confess his guilt and implore my mercy. Of course I did not wish to send him to the scaffold, and therefore I allowed him to compromise the affair by making a simple debt of it; and for that debt he is now a prisoner in the King’s Bench.”’ ‘““And you therefore gave him up the bills? ”’ said the Earl of Curzon, inquiringly. “How is this, my lord?” ejaculated Emmerson, with well-assumed astonishment. “Is it possible that your lordship never received those bills— But of course you have, otherwise how could you have obtained any knowledge of the matter at all? ”’ ‘“ Now, pray explain yourself, Emmerson,” said the earl, beginning to feel strangely bewildered once more, as if the mystifications of the previous night were to be perpetuated during the day and to follow him from the West End even into the heart of the City. “The history of the bills is plain and simple enough,”’ returned Emmerson. ‘“ I had already endorsed those biils in order to pay them into my banker’s hands, when I dis- covered that they were forgeries. Although willing to avoid instituting a criminal process against Colonel Malpas, and to hush up the matter, I nevertheless thought, on mature reflection, that you ought to be informed of it. I accordingly proceeded to Grosvenor Street to see your lordship on the subject. You were not, however, within, but her ladyship the countess was at home and disengaged. Time being valuable to me, and not choosing to run the chance of calling three or four times without seeing your lordship, I took the liberty of requesting an interview with her lady- ship, to whom I explained all that had occurred. Her ladyship was frightened lest the matter should breed some desperate quarrel between Malpas and your lordship, and. end in a duel; she therefore suggested that it would be better to allow some_little time to elapse, during which she undertook to seize some favourable opportunity to mention the whole transaction guardedly to your lordship. Well satisfied with this proposition, and acknowledging its pru- dence, I at once declared my readiness to leave the whole matter in the hands of her ladyship. I had not the bills with me at the time, but immediately on my return to Nicholas Lane, I enclosed them to her ladyship in an envelope marked connicloooks (C(O)