The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 226: what you’re looking at

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

196 THE COURT OF LONDON of that.remorseless vengeance of which Fernanda had spoken to me in Fore Street; and it struck me that you had been the victim of a slow poison. But who had administered it? Did not the death of William Dudley afford the key to the solution of that mystery? Yes, ’twas your own valet whom the she-wolf had employed to carry out her revenge; and the murder of the man, whom she had made the agent of her iniquity, was calculated to serve a double purpose. It re- moved from the world an individual who could tell disagree- able truths concerning herself, and it fastened upon you a crime which, the demoness hoped, would send you to the scaffold. All these ideas sprang up in my brain, and assumed the regular order of a continuous chain of events. I saw and comprehended it all, — motive and deed, cause and effect, action and aim. But my thoughts, when once pursuing such a channel, were not likely to stop half-way; and then was it that other suspicions sprang up in my bosom. Mrs. Lindley was murdered on the same night as William Dudley. Why not, then, by the same hand? Yes; for the motive that would prompt the expediency of clearing the she-wolf’s pathway of the valet would suggest the prudence of doing the same by the midwife. Both were the depositories of secrets which they might reveal in the hour of remorse, or let slip in the moment of inadvertency; and the lady’s ruin was constantly hanging as it were at the tip of two tongues. Away with them both! silence them for ever! and Fernanda is safe! Such was, no doubt, the reasoning of the demoness,— that unnatural mother who had assented to the death of her new-born child. You appear impatient, Mr. Eaton; but I shall not detain you much longer with my explanations and commentaries.” | ‘No, I am not impatient at what you are saying, Miss Walters,” returned Arthur; ‘ but 1 am excited, irritated, indignant when I reflect upon the weakness and folly which ever prompted me, even for a moment, to think of saving that woman and sacrificing myself.”’ ‘Ah! well you may repent such intervals of unjustifiable leniency,”’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘‘ But I was explaining to you, sir, how the inquiries which I made yesterday after- noon in the vicinage of Cavendish Square turned all my thoughts into those channels which led me in a few minutes ‘to fix upon Fernanda as the heroine of the two stupendous EORNICLIOOOLKS (EC)