The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 379: what you’re looking at

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

348 REYNOLDS’ WORKS studs to the cambric front of his shirt, and of rings upon his fingers. He speaks English tolerably well, but with a strong accent, and as he is amassing a fortune in this country, he loves it ten thousand times better than his own. It was about nine o’clock in the evening that the Duke of Marchmont strolled into M. Bertin’s shop, which, as well as his neighbour’s, was brilliantly lighted with gas, and after exchanging a few words of little moment with the foreman who was behind the counter, his Grace passed through a side door into the private passage. He ascended the staircase with the air of one who was perfectly well acquainted with the geography of the premises, and who felt himself perfectly at home in this proceeding. Mounting to the second floor, he tapped gently at a door, which was immediately opened by a middle-aged and discreet-looking female domestic. ‘The young ladies there, Annette? ”’ inquired the duke, with a significant glance thrown across the room into which the door opened. ‘Yes, my lord,” was the woman’s response. ‘“‘ Disengaged? ”’ “Yes, my lord.”’ Without another word, Annette led the way across the room, which was handsomely furnished, and advanced straight up to a large mirror which seemed to be suspended in the usual manner against the solid wall, though reaching down to the carpet. It was however in reality a door, which opened by means of a secret spring, and the woman tapped at what appeared to be the back part of a closet thus revealed. That woodwork against which she knocked was speedily opened in the form of another door; the woman stood aside, and the duke passed in to the place whither these singular and mysterious means of communication led. A beautiful girl, elegantly dressed, held that inner door open to afford the duke admission, and when he had entered, she closed it again. It was an immense mirror, suspended like the one in the room from which he had emerged, and when the door which it formed was shut, no one, unless in the secret, could have possibly entertained the slightest suspicion that it was a door at all. The reader has perhaps by this time comprehended that the Duke of Marchmont had passed from the tailor’s house Eomichbooks.c