The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

6 REYNOLDS’ WORKS and it was distressing to think that a young girl endowed with so many personal charms, and whose errors had been those of the head rather than of the mind, should now experience so much deep affliction. But thus it was. She felt that her father was almost ruined, and she reproached herself as the cause. Apart however from these self-up- braidings, there was something brooding in her mind, — an idea which for several days past she had riveted her attention upon, an idea which she longed to carry out, but for which purpose she knew not the means. Finette had been seated for perhaps about half an hour on that flower-bespangled bank, embowered amidst the verdure of the grove, when she heard footsteps approaching, and looking up, she beheld a strange figure. It was a tall man, with his face clean-shaven, wearing an ample brown wig, indifferently frizzed, and surmounted by a hat with slouching brims. His apparel was of the very shabbiest description, and scarcely seemed to have been originally made for him. His linen was far from the cleanest, and altogether he looked not one who might be classed amongst the number of fortune’s favourites. We need hardly inform the reader that this was none other than De Margaux. The troupe of strolling players had arrived in the town that very morning, and were to exhibit themselves at the theatre in the evening. De Margaux, who took no share in the stage-performances, but only managed to render himself useful behind the scenes, was invariably accustomed to seek as much privacy as possible during the daytime, for fear lest at any town where they stopped he might en- counter an officer sufficiently lynx-eyed to penetrate through his disguise. Thus, on the present occasion, he had left his companions at the tavern where they put up, and quit- ting the town, he had sought the grove with the intention of plunging into its depths and reposing himself until the shades of evening closed in. While threading his way into the midst of the wood, he beheld a female seated upon a bank, and before she herself had raised her countenance, he had recognized Finette. It immediately struck De Margaux that the young girl had either been compelled by circumstances or else prompted by her infuatation to abandon her home and launch herself forth in the world in search of him. His natural pride Gomiuilcbdoc <S (E(0)