The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

4 THE AYAH AND MR. REDCLIFFE 119 expanded and ripened into another feeling? Oh, sir,” con- tinued Sagoonah, enthusiastically, “‘ my brain is stored with memories in respect to yourself, — memories which I have cherished and which I have fed upon as the most delicious of food. Ah, imagination transports me back to the spacious halls and marble courts of Inderabad. I see myself a girl of fifteen or sixteen, seated by the side of a fountain, and you approach, you speak kindly to me, you tell me of the far-off land from which you came, — this land where I now find myself, and which at the time I so little dreamed I should ever visit. And I see you walking, as it were, in all the pride and glory of your own civilization, amidst the comparative barbarism of that native clime of mine. I hear those around me speaking of wise and liberal measures ordained by the king; I hear your name mentioned with admiration, for full well is it known that from the suggestions of your wisdom do those measures emanate. Oh, I am a young girl again, I am roving through the gardens and the marble courts of Inder- abad; I already love you, my admiring looks follow you, though you perceive them not. I look up to you as a superior being that has come down amidst the immeasurable inferior- ity of that people to whom [ belong.”’ It was with a strange and wild exaltation that Sagoonah spoke, an exaltation fervid, glowing, and rapturous, and if Mr. Redcliffe had eyes and a heart to be smitten with the erand spectacle of that Hindu woman’s darkly splendid beauty, he could not have failed to be stricken then. The supernal lustre of her eyes shed a halo of animation upon her countenance; her supple, willowy form yielded in elo- quent gestures and graceful attitudes to the varying tenor of her discourse; the quick heavings of her bosom gave visible undulations to the snow-white drapery which cov- ered it, while her arms, bare to the shoulders, —so admi- rably modelled though of dusky skin, — played their part with a grace all natural and unstudied in those gesticulations which gave such force to her language, half-pathetic, half- passionate. “ Sagoonah,” said Mr. Redcliffe, “I ought not to have tarried to listen to such discourse as this; and if you were an Englishwoman, our interview would have been cut short | almost at the instant it commenced — or perhaps, I should rather say that it would not have been granted at all. But CORnnICLOOOKS (GO) im