The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

10 THE COURT OF LONDON still gaze up at the portrait hanging to the wall, as if to prove that she did not fear thus to vindicate herself in the presence of that image of the dead one. Valentine seated himself near her, and the reader may suppose with what profound attention and all-absorbing interest he listened as Lady Ernestina Dysart detailed the particulars of Sir Archibald’s death,— how he had con- cealed himself in the bath, where suffocation had deprived him of life. , “Oh, Sir Valentine,’’ exclaimed Lady Dysart, breaking off in the midst of her narrative, ‘“‘ I do not ask you as a son to pass a comment upon your sire’s conduct, but as a man must you experience the loftiest admiration for that noble generosity, that chivalrous magnanimity which kept him silent, placing a seal upon his lips even when feeling the agonies of death gaining upon him. For you understand, Sir Valentine, that it must have been while the boxes and trunks were heaped upon the lid of the bath that the mortal warnings of asphyxia fastened vulture-like upon your sire, and he knew that if he gave vent to even the slightest moan he would betray me to a furious husband. He died, there- fore, died to save my honour — O God! how I loved him! ” There was a long pause, during which Valentine Malvern sat weeping. Ernestina shed no more tears. Her eyes were hot and dry, her throat was parched, her thoughts were harrowing to a degree, for she reflected that she who had once been worthy of that illimitable love and transcendent devotion on the part of the handsome and high-minded Archibald Malvern was now a polluted wretch, loathsome to herself, and still reeking from the embraces of the public executioner. Oh, she felt that whatever frailties she had been guilty of, whatever crimes she had committed, her punishment had already taken place on earth and had been consummated that night. After the long pause above noticed, she resumed her narrative, describing how her husband returned from France on a private and hurried visit to England, and how he discovered the corpse at the villa, recognizing its features. ‘I need not tell you,”’ she continued, ‘‘ that on rejoining me in France, he covered me with reproaches. I merited them. But then he brought me to England, and proposed to me dreadful things as the only condition on which he COMniiclbooOo (CO)