The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 258: what you’re looking at

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

THE DECISION 227 “Yes, I will explain myself,’ said Indora, with a sudden sensation of delight that she was thus furnished by his very words with an opportunity of again appealing to the tenderest feelings of his nature. ‘‘ I besought this brief delay in the conviction that during the interval you would not fail to ponder well and profoundly upon the decision toward the proclamation of which each passing day brought you nearer and nearer. Then I thought to myself that every proof of my devoted love, every evidence of my imperishable affec- tion, would present itself to your memory, and that the whole, accumulating with force and power, would rule your mind in my favour. I thought to myself that you would recollect how the mightiest princes of my own native clime sought my hand in marriage, but that I rejected every proposal for your sake. I thought, too, that you would bear in mind how by those refusals I drew down upon myself my father’s anger — ”’ “Your Highness had little to fear from the king’s indig- nation,” interrupted Redcliffe, ‘ for your influence over him was complete.” ‘The allusion is ungenerous,”’ observed Indora, softly, and half-reproachfully. ‘‘ It is meant to remind me that I stood as a barrier in the way of your freedom, and that I overruled my father’s favourable inclinations, when toward the end of your captivity he was about to yield to your often-repeated prayer to be liberated from it. Yes, it was a crime, —a dark, branding crime which I thus affixed upon myself — But, oh, I felt that it was death to part from you, and I had not the courage — deeply, devotedly as I loved you — to lay such suicidal hands upon myself.”’ “Oh, if you had given me my liberty,’”’ exclaimed Red- cliffe, “‘ I should have fallen at your feet and worshipped you as an angel. This is the hour for the fullest explana- tions, and I came prepared to give them. Think you, Indora, that when first becoming a captive in your father’s sovereign city, I yielded to his request to instruct your then youthful mind, for you were but fifteen years of age, — think you, I ask, that I accepted the duties of a preceptor from any love which I bore toward your father, who had deprived me of my freedom? Know you not that the king’s action was one which we Europeans regard as the basest and the vilest? I went to the Court of Inderabad as an ¢com (@) IDooks (E(@)