The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

86 REYNOLDS’ WORKS short, it bore every indication of a studied attempt to disguise what it naturally would have been. The duke opened it, but scarcely had he read the first two or three lines when the note dropped from his hand. He grew pale as death; sickness at the heart first seized upon him, then an almost maddening rage, and he was rushing to the door, when he abruptly stopped short. He grew calm all in an instant, but it was a terrible calmness, — a calmness full of deep, portentous menace. He picked up the note and read it through. Its contents were not long, but they were significant, — fearfully, terribly significant. This much might have been judged, were an observer present, by the srowing corrugation of the duke’s brow, the contraction of his forehead into lines so deep, so strongly marked that it appeared as if they never could leave that forehead in its wonted smoothness again. ‘“ No,’ he muttered between his teeth, “it cannot be. It is a foul, base calumny. An anonymous writer! What faith is to be put in him? And yet—and yet— Eternal God! if it be so, I am the most miserable of men. Ay, but my vengeance shall be terrible.”’ Then he paced to and fro in violent agitation, until sud- denly stopping short again, he looked at the letter once more, Dark and ominous was the shade which came over his countenance; his eyes shone with a sinister fire, his lips, ashy white, quivered as 1f with the palsy. ‘No, no,” he ejaculated at length, and as if in answer to some thought or plan which had almost settled itself in his mind; “ not without better proof than this.’’ He slowly folded up the note, consigned it to his waist- coat pocket, and issued from the mansion by a private stair- case and aside door. He descended into the grounds, plung- ing at once in the midst of the most thickly wooded avenues. In a few minutes he beheld his wife and Bertram walking at a little distance. She was not leaning upon his arm; there was nothing in their demeanour to confirm the suspicion and justify the jealous rage which that anonymous letter had excited in the duke’s soul. Presently they turned at the end of the avenue; he concealed himself behind a group of evergreens, too thick for himself either to see or to be seen. But it was to their discourse, as they passed the spot, that he meant to listen. In a few minutes they drew near, and Gomicboo Ss) (E(0)