The Mysteries of the Court of London by Pauline Clarendon — page 241: what you’re looking at

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

235 THE COURT OF LONDON himself to take enough nourishment to repair the waste of his body. The most eminent physicians were consulted; and they pronounced the affliction to be an unusually in- veterate state of atrophy which had thus seized upon this young man, till then so promising. His condition was kept secret from the friends and acquaintances of the family for some months, in the hope that a restoration to health would be accomplished and thus render it unnecessary to excite alarm; but the disease made such rapid prog- ress that Lord Marchmont lost all hope, for death ap- peared to be approaching with giant strides that might be seen. The nobleman was thus doomed, in his old age, for he had married very late in life, to behold his son perishing before his eyes; and he now began to reflect that when the fatal moment should arrive and Arthur Eaton should be snatched away by the merciless grasp of the Destroying Angel, the long-neglected, long-discarded, almost: forgotten Mr. Claren- don would become heir presumptive to the proud title and vast estates of Marchmont! Therefore, when this gentleman suddenly made his appearance at the castle, the old noble- man gave him the cordial though mournful welcome due to one who was in all probability destined to be his successor; and Mr. Clarendon then for the first time heard of the dis- tressing state of his younger relative’s health. Lord March- mont spoke not of the past as it regarded his treatment of Mr. Clarendon; but he was liberal in his offers and proposals for the future. The result was that the father of Octavia and Pauline returned home with the certainty of an income of a thousand a year for the future, and with every prospect of full soon becoming the heir to a noble title and an immense fortune. Such was the intelligence which Mr. Clarendon now com- municated to his daughters, and which they heard with mingled joy and sorrow; for if, on the one hand, they were delighted at the altered prospects of their well-beloved father, they could not help experiencing a profound sympathy on behalf of their youthful cousin who was so sorely and pain- fully afflicted. And this feeling was the more admirable on their part, inasmuch as they had not only never seen either Lord Marchmont or the Honourable Arthur Eaton, but they had no very excellent reasons for being interested in a ECORNIE DOO KS (Elo) m