The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

176 REYNOLDS’ WORKS ally formed, and promising as his own years also advanced to be of well-knit, manly proportions. There was a remark- able similitude between this brother and sister, — not only in respect to personal appearance, but also with regard to their minds and dispositions. They had been well educated; they were naturally intelligent, and they had intellectual tastes. They were devoted to each other, and thus, when the sister was occupied with her needlework, the brother read to her from some book which was calculated to instruct as well as to amuse. Over the countenances of both there was the slightest possible shade of pensiveness, which at times even deepened into melancholy, but when they caught this profounder ex- pression on each other’s face, they would instantaneously brighten up, as if it were a tacit consent between them that they should avoid mutually saddening influences. There is always something interesting about twins; there is sure to be a deep affection existing between them, and most gen- erally a strong physical similitude; their tastes, too, and the casts of their minds, generally have much about them that is identical, but perhaps in no case were all these charac- teristics so profoundly stamped, so marked, so visible, as in that of which we are speaking. Very interesting therefore was this youthful pair; and as if nothing should be wanting to sustain the impression of their twin condition, an identity of name had been observed with regard to them so far as the difference of the sex would permit, for the brother was denominated Christian, and the reader is already aware that the sister was called Christina. We introduce them in the afternoon of the day following Christina Ashton’s adventure in the Regent Park, and there- fore the same on which the duel had been fought in the morning. Christina had of course told her brother every particular, for they had no secrets from each other; and now, when occasionally glancing up from his book, he per- ceived that she was evidently somewhat restless and uneasy, he could full well divine the cause -thereof. At first he forbore allusion to it, fearing to rivet her thoughts too com- pletely upon the subject; but when he observed her rest- lessness increasing, he laid down his book, and said, in a plaintive voice, “‘I wish, dearest sister, that you were relieved from this anxiety.” EORMICLIOO KS (E(0)