The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XIV THE NEGRESS Tur chamber which our hero had just left was situated in a passage whence communicated the doors of several other sleeping-apartments, which he knew to be unoccupied. Into the first of these did he therefore plunge, but he closed the door with such rapidity that the current of air thus pro- duced extinguished the candle. Between the openings of the window draperies the brightness of the night shone with sufficient clearness to show him at a glance that the bed was untenanted, as he had expected to find it, and he lost not a moment in locking the door, so as to prevent the intrusion of Mrs. Oxenden. He threw himself upon the bed, and began to reflect upon everything that had just occurred. That she had pur- posed to play off the artillery of her wiles upon him, and ensnare him into an amour, he could not possibly doubt, and he had therefore no difficulty in conjecturing her motives. There was her passion to gratify, and there were her interests to be served. At any time, and under any circumstances, he would have loathed the woman who could have thus meretriciously sought to throw herself into the arms of a comparative stranger who had given her not the slightest encouragement, but his abhorrence was un- speakably enhanced when he reflected that it was in the house of death that Mrs. Oxenden had thus given way to the influence of her passions and to the current of her worldly interests, — in a house, too, beneath the roof of which her own innocent sister was reposing, and at a time when only twenty-four hours had elapsed since this self- same mansion had proved the scene of a frightful tragedy. Yes, our hero experienced the deepest loathing, the intensest 164 GOMmiGdooks (E(0)