The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

THE ALPINE TRAGEDY 89 “And now, Lady Octavian,” continued Monsieur Volney, still in a hollow voice, ‘‘ you know my secret. I have not shrunk from trusting you with it; I know that you will not betray me. It was a vengeance which I wreaked, and though before I perpetrated the deed I considered myself justified in seeking the deadliest revenge for my outraged honour and my wrecked happiness, though all the world too would hold that I was thus justified, yet frankly do I confess that my conscience has reproached me ever since the moment that I stood a murderer amidst that wild Alpine scenery. Never- theless, I repeat, I know that you will not betray me. But let me continue. I have only a few more words to say. I took from the person of the viscount whatsoever papers might prove his identity, and I dragged the corpse to a spot where I saw that the drifting snow was accumulating fast. In a few minutes the body of the viscount was completely enveloped in the winding-sheet which nature’s hand wove in countless myriads of flakes around it, and I knew that my secret was safe. And so it proved. Several years elapsed ere the corpse was disinterred from its mausoleum of snow by one of the dogs of the hospice, and several more years elapsed ere the marchioness and Alfred were led to the eluci- dation of the lost viscount’s fate. Alfred came to me at Fontainebleau to report the discovery, to entreat my for- giveness toward his father’s memory, and to beseech that there might be reconciliation between the two families, for he said that if I received him with rancour, he should feel as if his father’s sins were being visited anathematizingly upon himself. I saw that the young man suspected not his sire had met his death otherwise than by an accident which often overtakes travellers amidst the Alpine mountains, but yet I was alarmed. Conscience, Lady Octavian,’’ added Monsieur Volney, in a solemn tone, ‘“‘ makes cowards of us all.” There was another brief pause, — a pause which Zoe could not interrupt, for she was still a prey to almost overwhelming feelings, but the French gentleman soon continued in the following strain: “I refused to give the hand of feibridaee to Alfred De- lorme. It was not, Lady Octavian, because I in reality visited upon himself the sins of his father: 1t was because I could not bear the idea of meeting, much less encouraging EOMINGIOOKS (CO)