The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

152 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Duke of Marchmont had found some other instrument to execute, or attempt the execution of his foul purpose against Queen Indora’s life; but still there were circumstances which prevented Mr. Redcliffe from denouncing the duke before all the world, and the same considerations had led Indora to abstain from mentioning his Grace’s name to the police constables. “Indora,”’ said Mr. Redcliffe, taking her hand and pressing it with a grateful warmth, “ this frightful danger did you draw down upon your own head by your magnanimous in- tervention in those affairs wherein I am deeply interested. But Providence has willed that you should escape the peril, and the blow has smitten another. I need scarcely remind you that the moment has not yet come when we can deal openly with him whose name it sickens and appals me to mention, but yet something must be done to paralyze him, to smite his soul with a new terror, and thus prevent him from daring to think of the renewal of his assassin purpose.”’ ‘Yes, my dear Clement,’’ responded the queen, ‘‘ the tangled skein must go on gradually unravelling itself, gradu- ally but surely, as for some time past it has been doing. And then — ”’ ‘But in the meantime, I repeat,” interrupted Redcliffe, ‘“something must be done. Ah! first of all, for a moment, let us talk of Sagoonah. You have just told me of her singu- lar behaviour, as explained to you by Miss Ashton, how she pondered over the newspaper files by night, and how she sought your own chamber. These things are suspicious enough, but methinks that to a certain extent I have the power of reading them. Were it not for the dreadful cir- cumstances of this evening I should have abstained from revealing to you something that occurred, and it is this.” Mr. Redcliffe then proceeded to explain all that took place between himself and Sagoonah, — how she had declared her love, and how for a moment she had menaced him. He stated likewise that he had on previous occasions been struck by the peculiar flashings of her eyes, and how those looks had ever haunted him, as if fraught with a sinister and unknown terror, and as if being ominous of evil. Indora listened with profoundest astonishment, an astonishment so great that it for awhile absorbed all other feelings; but she was too noble- hearted and of too lofty a disposition to experience the anger CORNICLIIOOKS (E(0)