The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 400: what you’re looking at

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

COVENT GARDEN 365 hovering upon the very verge of perdition, her love getting the better of her sense of duty, the enamoured tempter’s persuasiveness proving stronger than her prudence. Would that I dared step between them to save her, and strengthen that lingering virtue which required so much tender pleading on his part to have its last barriers broken down. But no; it is not for me to intervene. There are good deeds which a philanthropist would fain perform, but which, as the world goes, he dares not even approach.” Then it struck Redcliffe as singular that at a moment when he had so little expected to hear it, the name of Madame Angelique should have been mentioned, and coupled too with that of the very person whom he had ere now noticed to be her neighbour. Was it possible that the young man was proposing an assignation, for the carrying out of which the milliner’s and the tailor’s establishments might be ren- dered available? Redcliffe was shrewd and intelligent; his experience of the world was too large not to enable him to draw rapid inferences from certain circumstances, and the question which he had just asked himself in respect to the lovers’ assignation became a conviction in his mind. He descended from the terrace, and passed slowly along the arcade lined with those shops where the choicest fruits of English gardens and hothouses, as well asof tropical produce, are so profusely displayed. In a few minutes the lady whom he had seen in the conservatory passed him by. He at once recognized her by her dress; he glanced at her countenance, and saw that though calm to the superficial observer, yet that it was an assumed and unnatural serenity which to the experienced eye veiled not the agitation that lay beneath. A tall footman in a superb livery, and carrying a gold- headed cane, was lounging in the arcade, but the instant he beheld the beautiful lady approaching, he accosted her with a respectful salutation. “ Has the fruit been sent to the carriage? ’’ she inquired, and Redcliffe, who heard what passed, perceived that there was a clouded tremulousness in her low, soft, musical voice. “Yes, my lady,’ was the response given by the lackey. “* Are there any flowers which your ladyship has ordered? ”’ “None to-day,” was her rejoinder. ‘‘ I saw not any that pleased my fancy.” No wonder that this titled lady raieinl have forgotten, com (@) DoOaks (E(O)