The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 210: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XIX CONTINUATION OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE PAST YEARS elapsed, and, as the reader will remember, it was when Clara was nineteen and Louisa was seventeen that their aunt was stricken with paralysis, losing both speech and reason, and though living on, yet unconscious of all external objects and even of her own existence. Some months passed, and when the two sisters found their funds exhausted, Louisa called upon the Canterbury banker, and ascertained from him that Miss Stanley, the aunt, had been accustomed to draw half-yearly for sixty pounds upon a certain Mr. Beckford who resided in London. The banker, at Louisa’s request, wrote a letter to Mr. Beckford, at No. 20, Hanover Square. During the long lapse of years which had intervened since Melissa’s death, Sir Archibald Malvern had regularly received and honoured Miss Stanley’s drafts. He had, however, bribed the postman never to deliver at his house any letters addressed to Mr. Beckford, but to leave them at a certain shop at the West End, where Sir Archibald dealt, and where he was wont to call at such times that the letters from Canterbury were likely to arrive. Upon receiv- ing in this way the Canterbury banker’s communication, he wrote, in the name of Beckford, to express his sorrow at Miss Stanley’s illness and announce that thenceforth the joint draft of the two nieces would be duly honoured for the same half-yearly sum as heretofore. Lady Malvern was then still alive, and exceedingly jealous as well as suspicious; hence the maintenance of all these precautionary arrange- ments connected with the name of Beckford. Indeed, to guard the more completely against the discovery of his youthful amour and the treacheries that had characterized it, Sir Archibald was not wont to honour the drafts 188 CORDICLOOO S (€(@ in