The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

218 THE COURT OF LONDON adopt, he returned to Albemarle Street, and represented to Louisa that her sister Clara was out of town with the Beck- fords for a week or ten days. Miss Bathurst immediately sent to Venetia to tell her what had occurred, but in the interval Sir Douglas Huntingdon had received our heroine’s instructions to rescue Louisa at any risk, and no matter under what circumstances, from the power of the Marquis of Leveson. She had likewise desired him to take Louisa. at once to Stratton Street, and thither did Venetia herself repair, to resume her character of plain and simple Clara Stanley once more, and await her sister’s coming. We have seen how Sir Douglas arrived at Leveson House in the very nick of time to deliver the beauteous young maiden from the unprincipled old nobleman, and how in his own carriage he bore her to Stratton Street, telling her on the way that her sister Clara had unexpectedly come up to town. We need but cast a brief retrospective glance over the meeting which then took place between the sisters. On that occasion Clara assured Louisa that her lover Jocelyn was innocent of the base things imputed to him, that he had passed scatheless through the ordeal of unparalleled tempta- tions, and that he himself would in due time reveal what his real name was, and give satisfactory explanations for having adopted an assumed one. She likewise gave Louisa the assurance that he would shortly be free; and in every respect did she do her best to cheer and console her well- beloved sister. Venetia was then about to touch upon matters intimately concerning herself. She saw how dangerous it was to keep her sister in the dark on that head any longer, and that the time was come when she should give at least some explana- tions respecting her own affairs. She purported, indeed, to announce the important fact that she was married, that she was a peeress, and that her husband occupied a high post in the prince regent’s household. But suddenly the artless and innocent Louisa began to give utterance to everything that Lady Ernestina Dysart had told her relative to ‘a certain Venetia Trelawney, now Lady Sackville and mistress of the prince,’’ so that the unhappy young woman, horrified at hearing her own history thus dwelt on so point- edly by her unsuspecting sister, could not for worlds have found courage to make the revelation a moment before S (CO nin (CS) nn) GDoOo