The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER . VII THE COBRA THE princess, Christina, and Sagoonah returned to the villa, and by the time of their arrival, our heroine’s indisposi- tion had passed off. She expressed a hope that her Highness would not accuse her of any foolish affectation, and Indora hastened to reassure her on the point in the most friendly terms. The hours passed on; it was close upon ten o’clock in the evening, and in a short time the princess would retire to her couch. Sagoonah had the principal charge of her mistress’s bedchamber, and she knew perfectly well that the English maid servants would not enter it after she herself had per- formed the last offices there. She likewise felt tolerably certain that the cobra when once placed in the bed would be too well satisfied with its warm, comfortable quarters to leave them speedily. At all events when the door should be closed, Sagoonah knew full well that the snake could not possibly get out, and therefore even if it should leave the bed and coil itself up in any other part of the room, the ayah calculated upon the hideous certainty that the princess must become the victim of its fangs. She was all the more confident in this respect from certain little circumstances which we may as well mention. Indora’s dressing-room joined the bedchamber; there was, as a matter of course, a door of communication between them, but the dressing-room was likewise entered by a door from the passage. It was by this latter door that the princess was wont to seek her dressing-room of an evening, and Sagoonah’s presence was never required for any length of time in aiding the princess munication closed, Sagoonah knew that the snake would 80 ECORNIClIOO KS (E(0)