The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER II THE LEGEND ONE evening, in the early part of September, the ladies had been practising music together until about ten o’clock, when Clarine, complaining of a very severe headache, said that she should at once retire to her own chamber. She bade her friend good night; she next repaired to her father’s study, where she imprinted the usual caress upon his cold, pale cheek, receiving from his lips no kiss in return, and she then withdrew. Zoe had remained in the drawing-room, and feeling no inclination to slumber, she sat down to finish letters that she had commenced to her father and husband in England. | For certain reasons of her own, it was her object to write to Lord Octavian more in the epistolary style of friend writ- ing to friend than of wife to husband. There were no assurances of love in her letter, but plenty of earnestly ex- pressed wishes for his welfare and happiness. She wrote at great length, too, as if to convince him that she was gratified in thus corresponding with him, and that the absence of love- assurances arose not from the absence of love itself. She described in most pleasing and graphic language the beautiful scenery amidst which she was dwelling; and only slightly glancing at the state of her health, so worded her allusion thereto as to give him to understand that it experienced no improvement. She was also careful to write in such a way as to make him comprehend that she preferred being separated, for the reason that a sickly wife would only be a clog upon the pursuits of her husband. She told him, too, that although she herself liked that Pyrenean scenery, it was not such as would compensate any young gentleman of the fashionable world for the loss of the gaiety, bustle, 9 EGOMINGIOOKS (GO) im