The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 317: what you’re looking at

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

286 REYNOLDS’ WORKS than beautiful in her countenance, — a touching pensiveness bordering upon melancholy, which rendered her eminently interesting; and as Christian stood respectfully aside to make way for her, and bowed courteously as he did so, she stopped and spoke. ‘Are you the young gentleman,” she inquired, in a soft, musical voice, and with her benignant look, ‘‘ whom his Grace has engaged as his private secretary? ”’ Christian bowed again, and replied in the affirmative. ‘“T hope you will be happy and comfortable at March- mont House,’”’ proceeded her ladyship; and then, with an ill-subdued sigh, she continued her way down the stairs. In the evening, after supper, as Christian was amusing himself in the library, looking at some of the elegantly bound books, and making notes of the titles of those which he thought he should like to peruse at his leisure, he happened to take down a volume from between the leaves of which a piece of paper fell upon the carpet. He picked it up, and found that it was a column cut out of an old newspaper. It was dingy with age, though the print was perfectly legible; and the date at the top showed him that the journal of which it had once formed a part belonged to a period of more than eighteen years back. Christian was about to return the slip to the book from which it had fallen, when his eye caught the name of Marchmont, and a closer scrutiny showed him that it was a report of a coroner’s inquest upon the body of a murdered duke bearing that title. Naturally interested in the circumstance, from being in the service of the present duke, Christian sat down to read the account; and thus for the first time did he become acquainted with some of those facts which have been related in the earlier chapters of our narrative. He thereby discovered that the present Duke of Marchmont had succeeded to the title of his murdered uncle, that the murder itself had been brought home by unquestionable evidence to the existing duke’s brother, the Honourable Mr. Bertram Vivian, and that there was an equal amount of evidence to prove a criminal inter- course between Bertram Vivian and the wife of the murdered duke. The young lad shuddered as he read the catalogue of iniquities thus circumstantially narrated. Replacing the newspaper fragment between the leaves of the book, and returning the book to the shelf, Christian GoOmicdooks (E(0)