The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUCHESS OF MARCHMONT 3D lest his parting injunctions should have been disregarded, and that she might have betrayed the past when made aware of the family into which she had married. Pained by his appearance, she lavished upon him the most tender caresses, and the old man’s happiness now appeared as com- plete as the pride of his ambition had already been. As for Mrs. Bailey, it was a proud thing for her to be enabled to salute a duchess as her relative; so that in the increased consequence and importance which it gave her, she found infinite reason for self-congratulation at having taken the captain and his daughter by the hand in the moment of their need. A little later in the afternoon Sir William and Lady Lomax, with their three daughters, arrived, and as the dinner-hour drew near, several other guests — dwellers in the neighbour- hood of Oaklands — were introduced. But still there was one to arrive whose appearance Eliza deeply dreaded. This was Lord Clandon. When at Oxford, she had never seen Hugh; she was likewise aware that Bertram had never breathed to his brother a syllable of their love, and it was not therefore through fear that this would be betrayed to the duke that the duchess dreaded to encounter Lord Clandon. But she thought to herself that if Lord Clandon bore a re- semblance to the lost Bertram, her presence of mind would be put to the sorest, severest test it had as yet experienced, and she would have to pass through an ordeal fraught with anguish and mental agony to which the tortures of the rack were paradise in comparison. But the dinner-hour came, and Lord Clandon made not his appearance. After waiting some time, the duke decided that the banquet should be served up. It was so, — the ladies in due course adjourned to the drawing-room, where in another hour they were joined by the gentlemen. It was now past nine o’clock, and Eliza was just congratulating herself that the dreaded meeting would be postponed until the following day, when the sounds of an equipage dashing up to the front of the mansion reached her ears. Now she summoned all her fortitude to her aid, — all her presence of mind. Sir William Lomax — a tall, thin, aristocratic-looking man, far advanced in years — was conversing with her at the time, and this perhaps was fortunate for her, inasmuch as if younger and more penetrat- ing eyes had been fixed upon her countenance, the evidences (EONMICELNOO KS (E(O)