The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 218: what you’re looking at

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

200 THE COURT OF LONDON to our hero with her warm naked arms, as if to prevent herself from falling. Jocelyn hastened to conduct her to the chair which he knew to be nearest; and she sank upon it like one overcome by physical and mental exhaustion. ‘This veil suffocates me,” she said, with that petulance which appeared the characteristic of her disposition. ‘‘ Thank Heaven a pitchy darkness prevails at this moment, so that I can take it off and breathe fresh air!’”’ Then, by the sound which met his ears, Jocelyn knew that she was re- moving the veil from her head. ‘‘ Now give me a glass of water, Mr. Loftus,” she said, after a few moments’ pause. He felt his way to a shelf on which a decanter and glasses stood; and filling a tumbler with water, he returned to where the lady was seated. ‘“‘ Place the glass to my lips,” she said, in a faint and dying tone, so that Loftus became very seriously alarmed lest she should swoon outright. He hastened to comply with her request, and by raising the tumbler to her lips, enabled her thus to imbibe the cool- ing beverage. “Enough, enough,”’ she murmured, in a voice that was now scarcely audible; and her head drooped completely against Jocelyn’s breast, as he stood close by the chair in which she was seated. ‘‘ Heavens! what can I do for you, Miss Linden?” he inquired, now truly perplexed and most cruelly bewildered. ‘“ Nothing, nothing; I shall be better presently,” she said, still very faintly, but somewhat more audibly than before. ‘It is a passing indisposition; let me repose for a few minutes upon your couch, and then I shall be so far restored as to be enabled to creep back into my own room.”’ As she thus spoke, she clung to Joselyn in such a manner that he was compelled to raise her in his arms, and sustain her — indeed, we might almost say carry her — toward the couch. But these attentions he bestowed upon her with as much tender delicacy as a brother would exhibit toward a well-beloved sister; and it might have also been with that sisterly reliance on her part which present circumstances were so well calculated to inspire, — it might have been, we say, in that same artless, ingenuous, and unsophisticated spirit that Laura Linden herself clung so tenaciously to our (E(0) EORMICLIOOKS