The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 393: what you’re looking at

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

THE FAIR STRANGER 371 cious as that of Bencull, could have remained inaccessible to the soft stealing influence and silent magic of such charms. The damsel was tall, slender, and of sylphid symmetry. Her apparel, though exceedingly plain, was very neat; and as she lay stretched upon that sordid couch, her drapery, humble as it was, seemed to have settled itself in purely classic folds, developing the flowing outlines of the form which it concealed, and displaying the exquisite shape of the beautifully modelled limbs. It was not, however, in such an esthetic light that Nell Gibson contemplated the sweetly reposing form of the inanimate maiden, but she did not fail to appreciate all the touching softness and all the tender interest that enveloped the fair stranger as with a halo; so that when she had removed the bonnet and beheld all that silken richness of the flaxen hair, setting off a countenance of virginal inno- cence, shoulders beautifully rounded and gently sloping, and a bust whose nascent charms were proportioned like a Gre- cian statue, the young woman threw upon Bencull a look of delight, as she whispered, ‘‘ This is indeed a prize that you have brought here! ” “Well, you may thank the night-coach for upsetting just at the brow of Shooter’s Hill,” returned Bencull. ‘“What on earth do you mean?’”’ demanded Nell Gibson, surveying him with a look of astonishment at such a singular remark. “IT mean just this,’’ answered the man: ‘ that as me and the two pals reached the hill in search of that feller Hunting- don, we heard a noise of voices calling out, horses plunging, and all kind of confusion, while lights was dancing about on the spot that the noise came from. So we crept up to the place, and we soon found out what it was. The night- coach for Dover had upset; and there was a rare scene, if so be all that took place in the dark can be called a scene at all. But it wasn’t quite in the dark, neither; for the. coachman and guard had got down the lamps and was moving about to see the extent of the mischief done. ‘ Here’s this sweet young gal,’ says the guard, ‘ which sat next to me just now; she’s pitched right on this bank, and is either stunned or dead.’ And as he spoke he threw the light on her face and figure in such a manner that me and the two pals caught a full view of her, for she was laying within a (COMMU 00)