The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

THE YOUNG PRINCESS 211 glanced around the spacious bedchamber in which she was seated, and as the thought slowly crept into her mind that many and many a horror, many a cruel deed, and many an atrocity had been perpetrated within the walls of Windsor Castle, she wondered whether that particular room had ever been the scene of bloodshed. As this idea stole into her brain, she shuddered with a deep involuntary tremor, and again did her glance sweep rapidly around the apartment. But although it was furnished in the most sumptuous manner, with gorgeous draperies drawn over the windows, golden- fringed hangings surrounding the gilt couch, the walls papered with a cheerful pattern and adorned with several splendid paintings, the cornices all elaborately carved and edged with gilding, the mantelpiece covered with ornaments, the magnificent mirrors reflecting the light of several wax tapers, and thus enhancing the lustre that flooded the room with its yellow glow, the toilet-table, the chiffoniers, and the chest of drawers all covered with elegant trifles and briliant knicknacks, — in a word, although nothing could exceed the gay and gorgeous aspect of that apartment, yet did it this night seem in the eyes of the princess to be even more sombre and gloomy than any old tapestried chamber filled with mouldering furniture and moth-eaten hangings in the haunted castle of romance. The truth is, the mind of the young princess was in that morbid state which made her view everything in a melan- choly light, or, rather, through the ominous cloud that thus hung upon her soul. She was unhappy; for many, many reasons was she unhappy, not only on account of her mother, but because she felt that she belonged to a family almost every member of which was steeped to the lips in vices, immoralities, and treacheries, if not stained with downright crime. It seemed to her, then, as if she were sprung from a doomed race, a race whose infamies had rendered it accursed in the sight of Heaven, and whose punishment had to some extent, in the person of the lunatic king, com- menced upon earth. No wonder that her mind became attenuated as thus she pondered, or that it should have thus been imbued with superstitious tendencies, so that when she looked around that sumptuously furnished room she beheld not the superb draperies and the brilliant ornaments, but fancied that there was blood upon the CORMICLOO© SS (C(O)