The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 215: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XVI MAKEPEACE THE scene now changes to the mansion of the late Earl of Lascelles, — that mansion where a horrible murder had been committed a short time back, and whence Isabella Vincent had fled in consternation and horror, as we have just heard her describing the circumstance to Christian Ashton. It was evening, and the Countess of Lascelles, dressed in deep mourning, was seated on a sofa in the red drawing- room, — that very apartment of which Isabella had spoken. She was pale even to deadly whiteness, haggard and care- worn; her sable garments and her snowy white cap of widow- hood threw out her pallor into all the ghastlier relief. There was the glitter of a wild and almost frenzied uneasiness in her eyes, as if she felt hers to be a position which was no longer tolerable, but yet as if she were utterly bewildered when endeavouring to make up her mind to any particular course of action. Oh, how different did she seem from that gay, beautiful glittering countess who but a short time back was revelling in all the delights of illicit love with her paramour Adolphus. Presently the door opened, but so noiselessly did it swing upon its hinges that it was no wonder if Ethel and Osmond had heard it not, when a few days previously Isabella en- tered and stood transfixed on catching the dreadful words that were then exchanged between them. Who was it that entered now? Adolphus himself, the Earl of Lascelles, as he had been called since the late nobleman’s murder. And he too was fearfully altered; he looked a dozen years older than he really was; his cheeks were even more sunken and hag- gard than those of Ethel herself; he walked with a slow and languid step, as if he were enfeebled and borne down by a 188 EORMICLIOO KS (E(0)