The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 263: what you’re looking at

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

234 REYNOLDS’ WORKS criminal folly on my part. I was resolved to exercise all my mental energies, and Heaven assisted me. I prayed fervently — oh, how fervently — for that assistance, and it was vouchsafed. To me Lord Octavian Meredith is now nothing more than one whom I can look upon as a friend.” ‘“Oh, God be thanked for this assurance!” exclaimed Christian, rapturously embracing his sister. ‘‘ But are you sure, my sweet Christina, that you are not miscalculating the strength of your own mind, that because in the purity of your thoughts you wish it to be strong, you deem that it really is so? ”’ ‘Believe me, Christian,’ she answered, ‘‘I am not deceiving myself any more than I am deceiving you. There was a duty to be performed, and it has been accomplished. Oh, my beloved brother, do you not think that the knowl- edge of our mother’s sad, sad history must have been fraught with moral teachings for me? How fatal to her happiness was that love of hers — a love-which endured after she became the wife of another! Could I, then, be otherwise than appalled, frightened, and dismayed by the contempla- tion of that sentiment which I was experiencing for one who is the husband of another? I grappled with it as if it were a serpent which had coiled itself around my heart; I seized it by the throat, I strangled it, | tossed it away from me. Ah! it was a struggle, Christian, and yet it has been accom- plished. I feel, I know, in the strength of my own soul can I declare, that were I to meet Lord Octavian Meredith this moment, no change would take place within me; my self-possession would not be outwardly assumed, but inwardly felt.’’ ‘“‘ Christina,’”’ cried her brother, in a tone of exultation, “more welcome to me than a thousand dukedoms is the intelligence which your words have just conveyed. I know that you are incapable of speaking otherwise than with sin- cerity, and I now know also you sincerely feel all that you have expressed. For weeks and months past I have been anxious to speak to you on this subject, but I have not dared to approach it. I was fearful that by a single word I might revive feelings and memories which in my heart I hoped were becoming subdued and were melting away. Oh, I repeat, my beloved sister, the joy which I now experi- ence is greater than language can express.” Gomiicbdoc CS (E(©)