The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

94 REYNOLDS’ WORKS mounted them a few minutes back. The music was not re- newed; it was therefore evident that all danger was past and gone. ‘he door opened, and the senior messenger hastened into the room, where falling upon one knee at Indora’s feet, he opened a towel which he carried in his hands, and dis- played a cobra cut into three pieces. Those fragments of the reptile were yet writhing convulsively, but all real life was out of them, — it was mere spasmodic action which the sec- tions thus displayed, and the snake was incapable of mis- chief. But Christina averted her looks with ineffable loath- ing, aS well as with a cold, shuddering terror. The princess herself flung but one glance on the remains of the deadly rep- tile, and in obedience to a sign from her, the messenger covered them up again with the towel. He spoke in answer to some question which the princess put, and then she bade the junior emissary likewise approach. He also knelt, and the princess, drawing from her fingers two rings of immense value, bestowed them respectively upon the two individuals who had thus saved her from destruction. “Yes, my dear Christina,’”’ she said, again addressing her- self in English to our heroine, and speaking in a voice of profound solemnity, ‘‘ Heaven has indeed interposed most sisnally in my favour. ‘Tranquillize your feelings, exercise a command over yourself, while I tell you what I have just learned from the lips of these men. It appears that the moment they entered my chamber, the instinct of the younger one convinced him in a moment that the reptile was there. Again I say compose yourself, Christina, al- though I confess that the bare idea makes even myself shudder. Yes, for forth from my bed, from beneath the clothes, from the very place where in another hour I should have lain myself down, glided the hideous reptile. ‘Then was it that the music played more loudly and more rapidly, as we heard it, and the cobra began to dance upon the bedding according to the wont of its species when thus fascinated by a peculiar melody. But its very moments were numbered, for the keen weapon of the senior messenger, glancing like a lightning flash, smote the reptile with unerring aim, and it lay severed, as you have just seen it, upon the bed which might under other circumstances have proved a bed of death to me.” Christina was so overcome by her varied feelings — thank- ECORNICLIOO KS (E(O)