The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 200: what you’re looking at

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

178 THE COURT OF LONDON the eldest sister, beheld these results with anguish and fore- boding, and earnestly remonstrated against the thoughtless course which Anne, Melissa, and even the young Lilian (then only fifteen) had pursued. But they treated her well-meant advice with the most unbecoming levity, and affected to regard the opinion of the world with extreme indifference. The consequences were precisely those which might have been anticipated. The three giddy girls, more thoughtless than positively depraved, and not yet unchaste, were in their hearts sadly mortified at being actually cut by their former friends, and at finding that their respectability was gone. The transition from this state of feeling to that of recklessness was easy and rapid. Anne, the eldest of the three foolish young women, began to reason with herself that she was now past twenty, that all her prospects of forming a good marriage were blasted, and that any change in her condition could scarcely be of a very flattering nature. That is to say, she might become a tradesman’s wife, or the mistress of agentleman. The former proposal was submitted to her by a shopkeeper, who was too much enamoured of her beauty to think deeply of her damaged reputation, and the latter offer was made to her by a gentleman named Owen, who was staying in Rochester at the time, and was much smitten with her charms. Mr. Owen was not very well off, but he was remarkably handsome, and was related to the Leveson family; he was likewise most impassioned in his suit. Anne was glowing and voluptuous in tempera- ment, and she accordingly fled from her home and accepted the protection of Mr. Owen. This was a sad blow for the pure-minded and virtuous Lydia, but Melissa and Lilian openly declared that they thought their sister Anne had acted quite right. Lydia remonstrated with them, observing that with such ideas in their minds they themselves were preparing the way for their own ruin; and in her heart she deeply feared that Anne’s example outweighed in its evil effects the good influences of her own advice and conduct. Soon after Anne’s elopement with Mr. Owen, a young gentleman, passing by the name of Beckford, exceedingly handsome, and not more than twenty- two or twenty-three years of age, came to pass a few weeks. at Rochester. He lived in the most quiet manner, brought. comlclooolks (CO)