The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

142 THE COURT OF LONDON for the death of that very husband whom she herself had been the means of sending to the scaffold, she was entombed in a seclusion that every day grew more and more intolerable. Her imagination was most prurient and licentious, her dis- position both fervid and depraved, and thus her passions, while unappeased, were like serpents gnawing at her vitals. Hence was it that Lady Ernestina Dysart, on the present occasion, experienced no inclination to retire to rest. She knew that her uncle the marquis had some intrigue on hand; but what it was, or who its object might be, she was unaware. Nevertheless, the mere thought that an intrigue of such a nature was in progress beneath that roof was sufficient to give such an impulse to her thoughts as to set her very imagination in a flame. In this morbid state of mind was it that she began to experience an irresistible longing to inspect once more the sculptured and pictorial representations of love and pleasure with which her uncle’s private gallery was filled. Taking up a candle, Ernestina stealthily quitted her room and repaired to that bedchamber whence there was a private door into the apartment containing the mechanical chairs. That this bedchamber would no more be used by the Marquis of Leveson she well knew; inasmuch as the terrible episode connected with Ariadne Varian had left such an impression upon his lordship’s mind as to induce him to order that chamber to be shut up at least for the present. Ernestina therefore felt confident that she ran no risk of discovery by proceeding that way, and, locking the outer door after her, she traversed the chamber where poor Ariadne had passed through all the phases of her appalling trance. Opening the door of the dressing-room by means of the secret spring, Ernestina proceeded into the room adjoining, and thence she passed into the gallery containing the sculp- tures and the pictures. Carrying the wax candle in her hand, she proceeded to examine the various groups of statuary and the splendid specimens of the limner’s art; but the farther she advanced down the gallery, the more consuming became the passions that were excited in her bosom. Beneath the sable weeds of mourning raged the frenetic desires of a Bacchanal. The virgin white collar which covered her breast rose and sank with the sensuous palpitations of the heaving globes CoORnniclooolks (E(0)