The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER X A HUSBAND'S SELF - MARTYRDOM Four or five days had elapsed since that tremendous scene at the mansion of the Earl of Desborough, which revealed to this nobleman and his wife the astounding fact that the criminal Ramsey was their guest, — a scene which led to the prompt departure of that treacherous individual, and threw the countess upon a sick-bed. During that interval the earl had been unremitting in his attentions to Eleanor. Hour after hour did he pass by her bedside, and it was his hand that smoothed her pil- low, administered her medicine, and bathed her feverish, throbbing brows. At first her senses wandered and delirium seized upon her, and on those occasions the earl was careful to exclude the attendants from the room, for he naturally feared lest she should make revelations of a character destructive alike to his reputation and her own. But it was not merely to keep a constant watch over her that the earl passed long days and held his vigils by the _ bedside of. the countess. No, his motives were less selfish and far more estimable; for he loved that woman who had deceived him, he loved, adored, worshipped her. And as he gradually beheld the danger passing away, convalescence approaching, and her thoughts settling. down into their proper channels, his heart rejoiced and he experi- enced a happiness greater than any he had long known; for as he contemplated that countenance so eminently hand- some, and swept with his looks that form so exquisitely symmetrical as it lay stretched on the couch, the snowy bedclothes affording indications of the contours of the shape and marking the superb length of limb and all the flowing 89 CORNUC } CS {