The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 263: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXV THE PRINCESS SOPHIA AND HER BROTHER Ir was about one o’clock on the day following the incidents just related, and the Princess Sophia had only just risen from her couch. She had not gone through the complete operations of the toilet, but with her hair negligently gathered up under a French cap, her luxuriant form wrapped in an elegant robe-de-chambre, and her feet thrust into satin slippers, she had thrown herself upon a sofa drawn near the fire in the dressing-room communicating with her bed- chamber. Under the plea of having letters to write, she had dismissed her attendant ladies for the present, but scarcely had the door closed behind them and she found herself alone, when she pressed both her hands to her throbbing, burn- ing brows, as she murmured to herself, ‘‘ Great God! the horrors of the past night! ”’ Then, with her head hanging back over the cushion of the sofa and her hands still pressed against her forehead, she remained for some minutes motionless and silent, in an attitude of blank despair. “Oh, it was indeed a night of horror,’’? she murmured to herself again, as she at length slowly raised herself from that posture and withdrew her hands from her aching brows. ‘“ Heavens! the misery of that moment when my eager looks plunged into the recess will haunt me to the last hour of my existence. But wherefore does not my brother come? Tis one o’clock, and he promised to be here by midday.”’ As thus she mused, her eyes remained fixed upon the timepiece toward which they were turned, and as the light from the window, tinted with the roseate hue caught from the crimson curtains, fell upon her countenance with a sort of Rembrandt effect, it showed off her finely shaped 234 Gomicbdooks (E(0)