The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 227: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XVII THE OATHS _ Iv was about eleven o’clock at night when the Countess of Lascelles issued from her own bedchamber and advanced into the passage with a taper in her hand. She was com- pletely dressed, just the same as when she had retired from the drawing-room half an hour previously, for she had dis- pensed with the attendance of her tirewomen on some plea or another. She had made up her mind how to act: she purposed to see the Earl of Lascelles and tell him everything that had occurred. At first it was her intention to put off this proceeding until the morrow, but then she recollected, from Makepeace’s eavesdropping, how dangerous it was to discourse with Adolphus on particular subjects when the domestics of the establishment were about during the day- time, and moreover she felt that it would be utterly impossi- ble for her to seek her couch until she had unburdened her mind to him who was so recently her paramour. Pale as death was the Countess of Lascelles as she threaded the passage; the light playing upon her countenance gave it an additional wanness, and with the corpselike face, and dressed in her sable garb, she looked like some restless visitant from another world. She tapped gently at the door of the young earl’s suite of apartments; she knew there was no danger of being over- heard by any other inmate of the house, for the sleeping- chambers of the domestics were all at a distance, and Isabella Vincent, be it recollected, was not at the mansion. At first Ethel’s summons elicited no response; she knocked again, then she heard rapid footsteps approaching through the ante- chamber, and the voice of Adolphus demanded curtly, ‘Who is there? ”’ 200 ECORNICLIOOKS (E(0)