The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 353: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXVI UNCONSCIOUS REVELATIONS LET us see what in the meantime had been taking place at the queen’s villa. Her Majesty, having seen Christina off in the carriage, which was to take up her brother in Mortimer Street and bear the twins to the grand enter- tainment at Balham Hill, returned to the Chamber in which lay the wounded Sagoonah. The ayah had for a week continued perfectly unconscious of the attentions bestowed upon her, and though Indora had no doubt as to some mischievous design having been harboured by her Hindu dependent, she relaxed not from those minis- trations which in the purest spirit of Christian goodness were bestowed. And there lay the guilty ayah, pillowed in a luxurious couch, with her queenly mistress watching every variation of her countenance, applying a cooling beverage to her lips when they appeared to be dry with feverish thirst, and devoting as much sedulous care to the wounded female as if she were a beloved sister whom Indora was endeavouring to snatch from the grasp of death. Seated upon a small ottoman by the side of that couch, Indora fell into a profound reverie, as she gazed upon the sleeping countenance of the ayah. ‘‘ And is it possible, Sagoonah,” she thus inwardly apos- trophized the unconscious invalid, “‘ is it possible that you could have been culpable of so much dissimulation and of so much wickedness? Methought that you loved me, that you sincerely sympathized with me in all I myself felt and suffered at the time you agreed to accompany me from our far-off Indian home to this western clime. But, ah! you cherished a passion for him whom I also loved, and whom I shall ever love so tenderly and so well. I re- 822 CORNICLIOO KS (E(0)