The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER IV THE PORTRAIT WE now return to the Countess of Desborough, that charming, beautiful, and strong-minded woman, whose passions were, however, more potent than her reason, and whose temperament had plunged her, after many, many successful struggles against temptation, into the vortex of love’s voluptuous enjoyments. For the attachment which she cherished toward Ramsey amounted to a fervent enthusiasm that would have con- ducted her all-smiling to the stake, had it been necessary to die for him, — a love not only arising from a sense of his manly beauty and from the happiness enjoyed in the burning moments of sensual delight, but also from admiration of those graces of manner and intellect which so preéminently characterized the resuscitated convict. Three weeks had elapsed since accident first threw in her way the man whom she knew only as Gustavus Wakefield, and‘a fortnight had now passed since she surrendered herself to his arms. During this period her love had become en- hanced into a frenzy, and her husband must have been per- fectly blind if he had not perceived the worship with which his beauteous Eleanor regarded their guest. But she had never once paused to reflect whether her conduct were not calculated to excite her husband’s suspicions. Yielding to the torrent of pleasure and ecstasy that bore her soul along and bathed her senses in a tide of unutterable bliss, she had no thought for anything save this delirious dream of delight, no consideration for any one save the man who had thus suddenly become the emperor of her heart. It will be remembered that Fernanda Aylmer returned to | her uncle’s mansion immediately after the failure of the 28 (C(O) ANC 6)(0)(©) (C(O)