The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

142 REYNOLDS’ WORKS back. She wore a flowing headdress, which set off that sable hair to all the advantage which such contrast could afford. A magnificent shawl was thrown, as if negligently, over one knee, and nothing could exceed the solemn grandeur which invested that throned lady. There was a paleness upon the soft and delicate duskiness of her cheeks; her look was coldly resolute, without sternness or implacability. She seemed the sovereign about to perform an act of sovereign justice. Immediately on her right hand sat a female closely veiled, and a little farther on, upon the same side of the throne, another chair contained a gentleman who wore a black mask. On Indora’s left sat, first of all, another veiled lady, then a man in somewhat coarse apparel, but whose features were completely concealed by a vizard of sable silk; and farther on was a female, somewhat stout in person, handsomely dressed, and also closely veiled. Thus, to look along that line, the queen was beheld seated in the middle, with two persons on her right hand and three upon her left. No other human beings were in that room at the moment when, as the clock of Oaklands proclaimed the hour of eleven, we direct the attention of the reader thither. Silent, if not altogether motionless, sat those six persons, but all except the queen afforded occasional though scarcely perceptible indications of either uneasiness or else of some other feeling such as awe or suspense. Indora’s large dark eyes burned with a strong, steady lustre; her red lips were slightly apart, not quivering nor moving in the least, but with their very absence of motion indicating that her thoughts were fixed and her mind intent on one special object which she had the conviction of being enabled to carry out. She did not once glance toward either of those who were seated on her right - hand and on her left; she remained motionless in her throne- like seat, not with an ungraceful rigidity, but with all the natural and unstudied elegance of posture which was likewise consistent with the perfect dignity of her queenly bearing. She scarcely seemed to breathe, so statue-like was she, for there was no tumultuous heaving nor falling of the superb bosom, so rich and so well developed in its sculptural con- tours. Altogether, with that magnificent and beauteous lady upon her throne, with the five figures (two masked and three veiled) on her right and left, with the funeral hangings to the walls and the sable pall spread upon the ceiling, with the EOMmicdooks (E(©)