The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 369: what you’re looking at

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

338 REYNOLDS’ WORKS allow Lord Octavian to remain under the impression which he had received from his own construction of the recent incident on the road. “I tell you, Christina,’ he exclaimed, vehemently, ‘ that I did not mean to seek an interview with you. I considered our parting of last night to be final — and Heaven knows the pang it cost me to breathe that word farewell. But I could not resist the temptation of riding around here to catch a glimpse of your home, of the place where you dwell. Oh, if I had foreseen — But it is better thus, it is better thus,” he passionately ejaculated, and yet he made a movement as if to stamp his foot with maddened rage. ‘Yes, it 1s better thus, my lord,’’ said Christina, who in endeavouring to entrench herself with a becoming feminine dignity in reality became surrounded with a reserve that was not merely cold, but even had the air of haughty defiance. At least so Meredith thought, and the idea was natural in his own morbid state of feeling. He therefore said, with a tone and look of bitterest reproach, ‘ You feel that you have dealt ungenerously with me, heartlessly, coquettishly, and you take refuge within the circle of your own haughty pride. You may tell me that I have no claim upon you, and you are right, for 1 am another’s. You may tell me likewise that you are the mistress of your own actions, and that you owe no account of them to me, and again you will be right. But, oh, Christina, had you for an instant been candid with me, had you suffered me to know when last we met — I do not mean last night, but the other day when I rescued you from the persons who were carrying you off — had you told me then that your heart was engaged to another — because it must have been so even then, for this attachment of yours cannot be merely of to-day — oh, Christina, you would have awakened me from a dream, you would have aroused me to my senses. But no, no, you did it not. [ told you that I loved you, — you knew it, — I even went so far as to declare that all my hopes of happiness were con- centrated in the idea, the one idea that you might yet become my own adored and cherished wife, and you did not tell me that you loved another. It is true that you answered me with what methought was a becoming maiden dignity, and I loved you all the more tenderly for it. But still there was ECORNICLIOOKS (E(0) im