The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 223: what you’re looking at

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

196 REYNOLDS’ WORKS until I discovered you. Accident made me acquainted with the circumstance that you had been living at a particular hotel; this day I learned that you had returned thither, but that you had removed elsewhere.”’ Redcliffe had listened with visible pain to this speech, which was delivered with an admixture of mournfulness and enthusiasm, — mournfulness at the coldness of his de- meanour when they had met, and exultation at all that she had accomplished for the love thatshe bore him. Andon his side, he was pained because his soul was naturally too generous not to compassionate the woman who had thus formed so extraordinary a passion for him, —a passion which he however could not reciprocate, and he knew not in what terms to convey a decision which should dash to the sround all the hopes she had entertained. ‘“'You do not speak to me,’ she went on to say; ‘‘ you are cold and distant. I half-feared that it would be so; yet I endeavoured to persuade myself to the contrary. I reasoned that you could not fail to be touched by these last proofs of love which I have given you, and that a feeling of sympathy might possibly beget a softer and deeper senti- ment.”’ ‘“‘ Indora,”’ responded Redcliffe, in the mildest tones of his rich, sonorous voice, ‘‘ this is an infatuation which is truly incomprehensible. I have no vanity that can possibly be flattered,’’ he added, with some degree of bitterness, ‘‘ and therefore I deceive not myself when I look in the mirror; nor~ would the adulation of the veriest sycophant —if I were a king, like your father, to-morrow — have power to deceive me. I know what I am, — a man prematurely old, my hair turning gray, baldness coming, my complexion sallowed by illness and bronzed by the torrid sun of your native clime — ”’ ‘“‘ Speak not thus,” interrupted Indora, gazing upon Red- cliffe with a look of genuine and ineffable tenderness. ‘‘ Even if you be as you describe yourself, you are not so in my eyes. Were your hair white, were your face wrinkled, were your form bowed with age, I should still love you as fondly and as well. Yes, I should still behold you only as you were when first I saw you long years back, in my girlhood, and therefore should I love you. Nor is it only that the image of your personal beauty of that time is so indelibly impressed upon ECORNICLIOOKS (E(0)