The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

118 REYNOLDS’ WORKS done if dealing with an English woman who sought to set herself up as a rival to Queen Indora and tempt or beguile him away from that plight which he had made her and from that troth by which he now considered himself so solemnly bound. But a second thought made him reflect that it was a Hindu woman who stood before him, one who belonged to a distant and different clime, whose thoughts and whose notions were as distinct as the habits and customs of that clime itself from those of Western Europe. Instead, there- fore, of displaying anger or scorn, Mr. Redcliffe considered it alike more prudent and more generous to reason with Sagoonah. “TI will not pretend,” he said, ‘‘ to doubt the seriousness with which you have made that avowal, inasmuch as I cannot for a moment suppose that you would stoop to such miserable trifling. But it is impossible, Sagoonah, that you can enter- tain the slightest hope — ”’ ‘“‘Hope,sir?’’? she murmured. “Love itself is hope. Of one thing I am certain, — you love not Queen Indora, although you have promised to espouse her. Then wherefore may I not hope that you will yet learn to love me? ”’ “ Tf I were to tell you, Sagoonah,” replied Mr. Redcliffe, with a deep mournfulness in his tone and a profound com- passion in his looks, ‘‘ that the power of love is dead within me, you perhaps would not understand my meaning. But let me address you on another subject. What is your age? You are in your twenty-sixth year, with all the vigour of youthfulness, still young — and I do not mean to compli- ment you when I say that you are beautiful. JI am three or four years past forty, but through care and grief my appear- ance is that of a still older man. Whatsoever personal beauty I may have once possessed is gone — ”’ “You forget, sir,’ interrupted Sagoonah, gently, “‘ that I have known you for many years — yes, from my very girl- hood have I known you. Was I not from a child brought up in the palace of Inderabad, and think you not, therefore, my memory retains your image as I first knew you, so that even while I now look upon you, I failto observe whatsoever rav- ages time or other circumstances may have wrought upon you. You were the first European whom I ever beheld, and therefore from my very girlhood was there all the interest of novelty in my mind; and 1s it surprising that such interest should have ECORNICLIOOKS (E(0)