The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

THE TRIBUNAL 151 formed in order to terrify him into confessions and extort from him avowals without which no good case could be made out against him. Perhaps likewise he fancied that there might be an inclination in another quarter to spare him as much as possible, and that his own brother was chivalrous enough to make the most fearful self-sacrifice that man could possibly make for the purpose of avoiding a terrific exposure that should startle the whole world. For if it were not so, and if these conjec- tures were not fraught with reasons for hope, why should all those proceedings be arrayed in mystery and darkness against him? Why should not everything have been left to ‘the regular course of human justice and to the development of legitimate process in the public tribunals? But whatever were the thoughts, the calculations, the con- jectures, or the hopes of the Duke of Marchmont, certain it is that he suddenly assumed a different bearing from that which he had at first worn. He summoned all his effrontery to his aid; desperation’s self nerved him to play a neck-or- nothing game, — to listen to all that might be charged ‘against him, to ascertain precisely in what circumstances he was placed, to envisage the perils which surrounded him, and then to act, as circumstances should direct, either with grov- elling entreaty or with lofty defiance. But Queen Indora had foreseen that through this phase the mind of the Duke of Marchmont would pass, and therefore had she spared nothing in her arrangements which was calculated to sustain the most awe-inspiring effects, and to strike him, as it were, blow upon blow, each one more powerful than its predecessor. COnNICLOOKS (S©)