The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

THE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 141 I give you is all the more cordial on that account. Refresh- ments are now served up, and you must accompany us.”’ Thereupon the two young ladies led Mrs. Owen into the cottage. Meanwhile the Reverend Bernard Audley, concealed be- hind the impenetrable verdure of the thick hedge which bordered the garden, had overheard every syllable of the preceding conversations. Not that he had cared much for what passed between Mrs. and Miss Owen, but the melody of Louisa’s voice had sunk down like the most delicious music into the depths of his soul. Ah! if that divine har- mony — for what harmony is more heavenly than the music of a lovely woman’s fluid voice — had touched some gen- erous chord in his heart, or had awakened the better feelings of his nature, happy should we be indeed to record the fact. But it was not so. Everything that was divine and pure and chaste and angelic about Louisa Stanley, in her look, her conduct, her gestures, or her voice, and which would have disarmed every other libertine in the world, only added fuel to the fire that raged in the breast of Bernard Audley. For the first time the lion did not sink down crouch- ing and subdued in the presence of a virgin in her purity and her innocence. Yes, all that had passed was overheard by the minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral, and as with greedy ears he drank in the details of that arrangement which was made relative to Mrs. Owen’s stay until the evening, he felt a galvanic glow thrill through his veins as Satan whispered in his ear that the opportunity he coveted would then be within his reach. Hurrying away from the vicinage of the garden, he repeated the details of that arrangement to him- self. ‘Mrs. Owen and her daughter will stay until ten o’clock. They will then take their departure, accompanied by the maid servant. Lousia Stanley will remain alone in the cottage for at least an hour. Alone? Yes; for what 1s the old aunt, bedridden, dumb, and deprived of her senses? ” and as he thus mused within himself he felt the devilish prompting again stir in the depths of his soul. He sped away from the neighbourhood of the garden, not returning at once into Canterbury, but hurrying across the fields in order to be alone with his thoughts, so that he might (C(O) nn) GDOOo <Si nin