The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

28 whose image was indelibly impressed upon his heart—whose love had been alike his elysian joy and his ineffable misery! Several minutes passed: and there they stood, —Eliza seeming to have her looks fixed upon the fountain, but in reality beholding nothing—Ber- tram now contemplating her with the strong ex- citement of feelings too long pent up to be re- pressible any longer. “ Eliza!” he said at length : and that word—that name—was alone thrown out at the time from his lips: it was followed by naught beside : he knew not what more to say—and yet he felt that he had a million things of which to disburden his oppressed spirit. And that name, when spoken by his lips, thrilled with galvanic effect through her entire form. Never had she thought that her own name was beautiful until she had first heard it pro- nounced by his tongue. And his voice, too, had all those melting cadences—all that clouded har- mony of sadness, which is so perfectly but danger- ously calculated to stir up the tenderest emotions of the soul. “ Eliza!” he repeated after a long pause, during which he had gazed on her with mingled rap- ture and despair: “at length we are alone to- gether.” “And we ought not to be alone together,” she answered, in a voice which would have been in- audible were it not for its natural clearness: and now her cheeks were suddenly mantled in blushes. “Wherefore should we not be alone?” asked Bertram bitterly. “Is it that your conscience tells you I have come as an accuser—and that you are afraid to look your accuser in the face ?” “No, Mr. Vivian!” said the Duchess proudly, as she raised her eyes and fixed them on him for a few moments: then they were suddenly bent downward again, and the pearly tears gushed forth. “T see,’ she added, again in a voice scarcely audi- ble, “that you believe me guilty of the foulest, vilest, most dishonourable perfidy. But it was not so No, Bertram—it was not so!” “What, Eliza?” he ejaculated in amazement : “what is this that I hear ?’—then the next mo- ment he added with scornful bitterness, “ But you are heaping insult upon injury to treat me asa poor credulous fool !” * Bertram,’ answered the Duchess, in a voice that was low but clear, and again raising her eyes towards his countenance, on which she gazed with the steadiness of innocence in her looks,—“ as I have a soul to be saved—as there is an Almighty who hears my words now, and will punish me hereafter if I wilfully deceive you—I was not guilty !” “ Eliza,’ said Bertram, suddenly seized with the wild excitement of rage, fury, and indigna- tion—and again his eyes flashed forth unnatural fires,—“if you were deceived, maledictions—ten thousand, thousand maledictions upon the heads of those 2 “ Cease!’ almost shrieked forth the horrified Duchess, her countenance expressing ineffable agony. “ You would invoke curses upon the head of my perished father !” “My God, I comprehend it all!’ murmured Bertram: and he placed his hand upon his throb- ! speaking in a more collected manner. Vern on iia - 1s. COMMCDOO THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. - bing brows, as if thereby to steady the brain ‘that rocked and reeled within. “Yes,” continued Eliza, now hurried away by the strong impulse which opportunity as well as her own feelings gave her to justify herself,—* I was deceived, Bertram—cruelly deceived! God, who alone can read the human heart, knows how true I was to you; and if an angel-witness were to appear before you now, that holy being could ~ tell how I cherished your image while you were absent—how I cherished it even after the terrible report that you had gone down to a grave in the deep waters! Bertram, it was not until I became another’s, that I learnt the tremendous fruth that you were alive!” “Eliza, Eliza! this is agony for me to hear !” murmured the wretched Bertram, his counte- nance filled with despair. “I wrote to your father twice a “TI know it,’ she interrupted him softly—but, Oh! with what a world of ineffable feeling in her looks: “I know it. My father deceived me But spare him—spare his memory May God have forgiven him!” “Eliza,” continued Bertram, “TI believe you. There is truth in your looks—truth in your words. [ always believed you truthful—until the fatal day, when on arriving in England to hasten and claim you as my bride, I read in a newspaper the report of your marriage. Just heaven! what sear- ing, blinding, sight-blasting words for me! Do you know, Eliza, that for hours I was like one gone mad—that I strove to lay violent hands upon myself, and that the persons of the hotel prevented me P” “Bertram, Bertram—tell me not all this!” moaned Eliza, sobbing bitterly: ‘‘it is more than I can en- dure! Since the first instant that the intelligence of your death reached me, my life has been one long agony—one continuous throe of indescribable despair. The rack may torture for hours or for days—and the miseries of the victim will end in death: but my rack, Bertram, has now lasted for more than two long years and it will last, Bertram, until I go down into the cold graye where alone this heart of mine can be at peace !” “Kliza, it is now for me to implore you to be calm—to entreat that you will not talk to me in this distracting, frightful way!”—and Bertram, falling on his knees upon the stone margin of the fountain’s reservoir, took her hand and pressed it to his lips: but the next instant dropping 1t—nay, more, even tossing it away from him—he started up, exclaiming in violent excitement, “ That hand is another’s !—it is sacrilege in me to touch it!” Eliza’s tears fell fast and bitterly. She would not have withdrawn her hand of her own accord— at least not so abruptly as he had flung it from him. She was shocked—she was hurt—she was wounded: the affliction which that poor creature endured in those rending moments, was such as no man, even the most vindictive, could wish his mortal enemy to undergo. | * Pardon me, Eliza,” said Bertram, in a tone of tenderest contrition ; “I was rude—I was brutal. But, heavens! I am not the master of myself !”— and again he pressed his feverish hand to his wildly throbbing brows. ‘* Let me say a few words of explanation,’ he resumed after a while, and ls siete <SHGEO