The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

52 THE COURT OF LONDON and I feel diabolical thoughts springing up in my mind, as if I craved for vengeance, I who have never even trodden upon a worm, much less inflicted an injury upon a human being.” And bending her head forward, the young maiden covered her face with her hands and burst into an agony of tears. The prince stood irresolute; he knew not how to act. On the one hand, he was maddened by the desire to possess that lovely girl, who appeared to him even more charming than ever in the midst of the grief which convulsed her; but, on the other hand, the reproaches to which she had just given utterance, raised something like a feeling of remorse in his soul. Nearly a minute passed, during which his Royal Highness remained leaning against the door, his eyes gloating upon the beauteous kneeling figure at his feet, and his compunctious feelings waging a severe struggle with his burning desires. The violence of the orphan’s grief having thus leisure to subside somewhat and the poignancy of her anguish to receive a slight mitigation, she withdrew her hands from her countenance, raised her eyes timidly, and was instantly struck by the expression of hesitation and uncertainty which was legibly depicted upon the features of her persecutor. A gleam of hope flashed to her soul; and starting to her feet once more, she hastily wiped away the tears, those drops of diamond dew that gave sweetness and softness to the light of the eyes on whose long lashes they hung. “Your Royal Highness is touched by my appeal,’ she exclaimed, in a voice which was still broken by deep sobs, though during the intervals between those evidences of profoundly concentrated emotions it was tremulously clear and musically pathetic, ‘‘ and you will not add to my afflic- tions by any outrage or wrong. Consider my position, great prince, and have mercy upon me. An orphan and friendless, I have no protector, no vindicator. Bitter, bitter, is my lot in this world, Heaven knows, and yet gall may be added to that bitterness, and my sorrows may be enhanced to despair. For, as there is a God above us, I vow that if disgrace and shame and ruin should overtake me, I will not survive that crowning misery, that consummating woe. No, never, never; but in a voluntary death, dark and terrible though the crime may be, will I end my wretched existence. Spare me, then, COMmicboolks (CO)