The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 358: what you’re looking at

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

UNCONSCIOUS REVELATIONS 327 look slowly around with the vacant astonishment, half- dismayed and half-inquiring, of a young child who awakens in a strange bed and in a strange room. Indora bent over Sagoonah to see if she would be recognized, but the lids closed gradually, and with an air of heaviness, upon the ayah’s eyes, the long ebon lashes again resting upon the dusky paleness of the cheeks. There was another interval of silence, during which Sagoonah appeared to sleep in pro- foundest tranquillity, until her bosom began slowly to heave with one long, deep-drawn sigh, and more words wavered murmuringly upon her lips. “No, not love, it is hatred now!” she said, ‘“‘ hatred, because he loves another, hatred because he will not accept my love. Oh, wretched, wretched Sagoonah, to appeal to him in vain, to entreat and to threaten in turns, and all so fruitlessly! And heso cold, so reserved, so distant — ay, and even so disdainful! But I will be avenged. I will leave this house, never to return. Ah! my mistress has jewels and gold, I may be rich. Poverty shall not clutch me with its long, lean, withered hands, nor hover around me with its saunt, squalid, emaciated form. Away, away to a magis- trate! Let the blow be struck at once, a double blow, — a blow that shall crush him and overwhelm her with despair. Yes, a blow that shall destroy both at once. There has already been too much of love; the time has come for hatred. But, no, not in this white dress of mine, which marks the slave. Who will believe me? Then what am | to do? Ah, happy thought! apparel myself in the queen’s raiment, become a lady at once, go richly dressed into the presence.of the magistrate, and then, then he will believe me! ”’ It was thus that Sagoonah reénacted in her conscience- stricken unconsciousness, and in the fever of her half- subdued, half-hushed delirium, that last scene which had entailed upon her so frightful a result. Indora continued to listen with breathless attention, but with dismayed and hor- rified feelings. Everything was now revealed to her; had Sa- goonah made a regular and intentional confession, it could not have been more explicit, nor could its details have been more lucidly defined. The queen saw that for some time past she had indeed been cherishing a serpent who sought to sting her; she had been standing upon a mine to which the hand GOMIGIOOKS (C(O)