The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 344: what you’re looking at

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

THE SAFE AND THE CASH-BOX 313 moonlight night; the window looked upon a grass-plat at the side of the house. No human being was to be seen, no gliding figure amongst the trees. Still there was ample time during the viscount’s consternation for any individual to disappear around the angle of the building, and thus because he saw no one he dared not come to the conclusion that no one had looked into the study. Rushbrook was irresolute how to act. Should he re- turn the notes and gold to the cash-box and drop the key somewhere, or should he keep his plunder and run every risk? Prudence suggested the former course, his dire necessities commanded the latter, so that at length, with that recklessness, half-flippant, half-desperate, which charac- terizes unscrupulous individuals in certain circumstances, he said to himself, ‘‘ Well, at all risks I will keep the money.”’ He stole forth unperceived from the study, and reas- cended to the ballroom. There, still unobserved, he dropped the key near the very chair in which Anastasia had been seated when it glided down from the bosom of her dress. He continued to lounge about the rooms, but there was a presentiment of evil floating in his mind. The possession of the money did not contribute to his happiness, nor re- lieve him from the apprehension that the mode in which it had come into his hands might be discovered. As for the countenance itself, he had no definite idea of it; he had no sooner caught a glimpse of it than it was gone; as soon as seen it vanished. Yet that he had really be- held that countenance, he could not conceal from himself; he dared not flatter his mind that it was a mere delu- sion. Christina danced the quadrille with the young scion of the aristocracy, and when it was over she was conducted back to a seat. Scarcely had her late partner quitted her side than Lord Octavian Meredith rejoined her. He looked pale, but still there was a certain expression of decisiveness in his regards and on his lips, which immediately struck Christina, for an instant even alarming her, for he had on this night repeated that which he had said to her before, namely, that she would drive him to despair. “Will you favour me with a few minutes’ conversation somewhere?’”’ he asked, in a voice which, though low, sounded strange and even unnatural, as if the speaker CORnnICLOOOKS (CO)