The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 372: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXXV THE VILLA AT GENEVA THe reader must suppose three months to have elapsed since the occurrences which we have just been relating, and the scene now changes to a beautiful villa-residence in one of the delightful suburbs of Geneva. The house itself was spacious. The rooms on the ground floor opened with windows reaching the ground, upon sloping lawns, and the casements of the upper story were furnished with balconies filled with the choicest flowers. For though it was but the middle of the month of March andin England the winds blew bleak and cold, yet the season was all warmth and brightness and floral fragrance in the sunny South. The trees were covered with verdure, the gardens were gorgeous with flowers, and nothing could be more beautiful, nothing more picturesque, than the villa-residence to which we have alluded, seated as it was upon a gentle eminence commanding a view of the lake, and surrounded by gardens and pleasure-grounds laid out in the most tasteful manner. It was at this villa that her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales — better known to the masses in this country as the Princess Caroline — was passing a short time with her retinue. Theinjured wife of the prince regent, after visiting several towns in Italy and some of the most interesting scenery of Switzerland, had suddenly taken it into her head to settle down in this secluded but charming retreat in the Genevese territory. Her Royal Highness’s suite was small, consisting altogether of only a dozen persons. There were six ladies in waiting, of whom Agatha, Emma, and Julia Owen were the three junior. The other three had been for some time in the 309 Cconniclooolks (C(O)