The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 198: what you’re looking at

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

ST. JAMES’S PALACE 173 frost, the snow, and the ice of the hyperborean regions to the northward of inhospitable Labrador. It may have chanced that the reader, while roving in a garden during the warm months when nature puts forth all the brightest and the best of her floral decorations, has observed a beautiful lily timidly revealing its virgin purity in the midst of all the most flaunting and gaudy occupants of the glowing parterres. That chaste and stainless lily seemed, as it were, out of place, unless for the purpose of contrast, by the side of full-blown peonies blushing their deepest red, groups of tulips displaying their variegated hues in all the pomp of their gaudy glory, the pinks drooping on their slender stalks, the marigolds vying with the bright yellow of the sun, the red roses expanding in all the pride belonging to Flora’s cherished favourites, the glaring wall- flowers bright with their mingling yellow, warm sienna, and rich brown tints, the bluebells deep as the indigo seen in the hyacinth of India’s plains, and all the other ornaments of the garden that force themselves most obtrusively upon the gaze. The eye, therefore, when contemplating such a scene, and when intoxicated with the blaze of beauty belonging to all that floral pomp, has settled at last with a feeling of relief and with a touching interest upon that fair, chaste, and modest lily appearing in the midst of such overwhelming gaud and grandeur. Apply this illustration to the world of fashion, and if amidst the brilliant galaxy of splendid duchesses, exquisite marchionesses, superb countesses, and magnificent ladies of all grades and degrees of aristocratic rank, you behold one charming, retiring, and unsophisticated girl scarcely conscious of her own beauty, and calculated to please and interest the eye, not to dazzle and overwhelm the senses, then have you found your lily amongst your flaunting, gaudy pageantry of flowers. And such was Florence Eaton. Four or five days had elapsed after the incidents contained in the few last chapters, and it was about noon, when Lady Florimel said to her niece, ‘‘ My dear Florence, I think that I have a little treat in store for you to-day.” “ What is it, my dear aunt? ”’ inquired the beauteous girl, gazing up with a siniling countenance from the embroidery in which she was engaged. “You know, my dear girl,’”’ replied Pauline, ‘‘ that her CoOnniclooolkks (C(O)