The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

8 REYNOLDS’ WORKS was & Mansion capacious enough for the accommodation of a large family, with forty or fifty servants. The reader may thence judge how the few inmates it now contained would have been lost, as it were, if scattered about the edifice; but to prevent this extreme loneliness, all the rooms that were occupied were as much in assemblage as possible. The main body of the building had three stories in addition to the ground floor. The dining and breakfast-rooms, as well as Monsieur Volney’s study, were on the ground floor, the drawing-room and all the principal bedrooms on the first floor, the servants’ chambers on the second floor, and the third or highest was totally unoccupied. Passages ran the entire length of the main building, on each of these floors. The principal staircase — the only one used by the present inmates — was in the middle of the building, but at each end there were smaller staircases, at the bottom of which were doors communicating with the corridors that led into the wings. The bedchambers occupied by Clarine Volney and Lady Octavian Meredith were, as already stated, on the first or drawing-room floor, and their windows looked on the garden at the back of the house. These chambers did not join each other; they were separated by an oratory, or small chapel, the appointments of which had become much dilapidated through neglect. There was an organ in this oratory, and Clarine one day informed Zoe that she had endeavoured to play it, but it was completely out of order. There was, how- ever, a good piano as well as a harp in the drawing-room, for when Mr. Volney purchased his furniture, he had not for- gotten that Clarine had an exquisite taste for music; and now, as Zoe was likewise gifted in that respect, the two ladies were enabled to play in concert. Lady Octavian Meredith had already been several weeks at the chateau before a syllable reached her ears to the effect that it was reputed to be haunted, and then its evil fame in this respect reached her knowledge from the circumstances that we must record in the ensuing chapter. ECORNICLIOOKS (E(0)