The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 304: what you’re looking at

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

CHRISTINA AND LORD OCTAVIAN 273 grandeur or to pathos beneath her delicate fingers. She sang beautifully, and had a sweet, melodious voice, so that having tested the capacities of the instrument, she presently began to accompany herself in some air. But scarcely had she commenced the song, when Lord Octavian Meredith reached the drawing-room door. Those strains floated on his ears, he recognized Christina’s voice, he stopped to listen. Himself passionately fond of music, it was with a growing rapture that he thus drank in those delicious sounds, in which the most exquisite vocal and in- strumental harmonies were blended. His rapture amounted almost to an ecstasy, his pulses thrilled with delight; it ap- peared as if he had been suddenly borne to the very threshold of Elysium itself. Noiselessly he turned the handle of the door, as gently and cautiously did he open it, and as he looked in, he beheld Christina seated at the piano, her back toward him. She, totally unconscious of his presence, totally un- suspicious of the opening of the door, continued her music and her delicious warbling, all the ecstatic effects of which were enhanced in Lord Octavian’s estimation now that he was enabled to contemplate her sylphid figure as she was seated there. Her raven tresses were floating over her shoul- ders; every now and then he caught a vanishing glimpse of her faultless Grecian profile; every gesture and movement on her part seemed characterized by grace and elegance, and fairer than the piano’s ivory keys themselves were the delicate hands that passed over them. Now did those sweetly tapered fingers appear to skip as it were with almost lightning celerity from note to note; now they rested for a few seconds on some particular keys, while the voice of song continued to blend in ravishing harmony with the music which those fingers made. And that shape, too, — how beautifully modelled was it. Even if he had never seen her countenance before, Meredith could have staked his ex- istence that the loveliest face must belong to so charming a figure. The song ceased, the last sounds of the music were vibrating tremulously through the apartment as Octavian closed the door, and Christina started up from her seat. - - “Mr. Percival,’ she exclaimed, her first feeling being one of grateful joy, though mingled with surprise thus to en- counter the chivalrous individual who had perilled his life in a duel for her sake. EONMICLIOOKS (E(O)