The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 343: what you’re looking at

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

THE LAMB AMONGST THE WOLVES © 3221 came thoughtful, as if weighing the matter seriously in her mind, Ernestina continued to observe, ‘‘ If you were to remain long with us in London you would soon perceive that what you call love performs but a very secondary part in genteel marriages. I will give you anexample. It is not two months since the beauty of the fashionable world, Venetia Trelawney, married a very handsome, intelligent, and fas- cinating young gentleman named Horace Sackville. Their honeymoon was short indeed, and at its expiration they were suddenly created Lord and Lady Sackville. But that was not all. His lordship was at the same time nominated to a hich official situation in the household of the prince regent; and, accordingly, the newly married couple gave up their beautiful villa at Knightsbridge and took possession of a suite of apartments in Carlton House. Now Carlton House, my dear Louisa, is the prince regent’s palace; and perhaps you may have heard that the prince regent himself is a very naughty, wicked man, and much too fond of the ladies. But, in plain terms, the reason why Lord and Lady Sackville thus took up their abode at Carlton House was in order that her ladyship might be under the same roof with the prince, whose favourite she has become. Thus, you see, although it is most probable that Lord and Lady Sackville married in the first instance for what is called love, they hesitated not to make the sacrifice of that feeling when titles, pensions, and places were offered them. As a matter of course, then, this Venetia of whom I am speaking to you is the mistress of the prince — ” ‘Enough! enough!” exclaimed Louisa, the colour mounting to her cheeks as her pure soul revolted from the narrative the main point of which had only just that instant flashed to her comprehension. ‘Oh, if such detestable creatures as this Venetia constitute the charm, the glory, and the worship of your fashionable world of London, how little do I envy the rich and the great ones of this metropolis! Better, better far is my own humble cottage situated in a retired suburb of Canterbury, and more welcome to me would prove a chaplet of the roses that bloom in summer over that cottage portico than the most brilliant coronet seated upon the brow of your titled lady of the metrop- olis.”’ Ernestina was about to respond to these observations, CONNICOO© (SO)