The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 199: what you’re looking at

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

172 REYNOLDS’ WORKS wards of one hundred thousand pounds should be without a single acquaintance in London. She could scarcely believe it was so, and therefore regarded it as an excuse on the part of an impostor for not giving any other reference than the one to the banker. But then, as she entered Mortimer Street, glanced at Mrs. Sifkins’s over the way, and thought of how she had overreached herself by her suspicions in respect to the old gentleman who had taken her rival’s lodgings, had lived there for years, had paid his rent regularly, and never looked into his tea-caddy, she endeavoured to reason herself against her present mistrust. In short, the result was that she decided in the gentleman’s favour, though not without a lingering apprehension in her mind that she was doing wrong and that he would turn out a swindler after all. The new lodger’s luggage presently arrived from the neighbouring hotel, and as Mrs. Macaulay was on the lookout for the porter who brought it, she beckoned the man into her parlour, gave him a glass of gin, — not forgetting to take one herself likewise, — and began to question him. ‘ Who is this Mr. Redcliffe? ”’ she inquired. “Don’t know, ma’am, nothink about the gentleman, only that he has paid all the servants in a wery ’andsome manner.”’ ‘‘ How long has he been at your hotel? ”’ “Why, he come fust of all a matter of six or seven weeks back, I should think, as near as I can recollect. But he only stayed a few days, and was shut up in his room looking over all the old files of newspapers he could possibly get hold of. We have filed the Jimes at our place for the last twenty year, and, bless me! if I don’t think he must have read it all through, for he was always poring over it from morning to night. The head waiter said as how he thought the gentleman was either a politician studying politics, or else fancied hisself to be the heir at law of a fortune, and was looking out for the advertisements to the next of kin, or else that he must have been abroad a many years, and on coming home wanted to see what had took place in his absence.”’ ) ‘“‘ How strange!’ said Mrs. Macaulay; then as her own ideas always settled on money matters, she added, “I will be bound it was the advertisements he was looking after, and that he has got his fortune, and that’s the money that ECORMICLIOO KS (E(0)