The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 392: what you’re looking at

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

THE LAST MEETING 361 tentness in a direction exactly opposite to that whence Amelia and the baronet were thus advancing; and the nearer they drew toward him, the more did they feel convinced that their alarms had been groundless. But all in a moment, the man turned and faced them, and ere the eye had time to wink, he discharged a pistol point- blank at Sir Richard Stamford. : A piercing shriek thrilled from the lips of Amelia, and a ery of mortal agony burst from those of the baronet as he started back and fell heavily upon the ground. The princess threw herself upon her knees by his side, and at the same moment there was the report of a second pistol. Wild with terror, and in the belief that this latter weapon was aimed at herself, she cast her frightened looks toward the assassin; but there was no cause for alarm on her own account, — the man lay stone dead at a little distance! Ten minutes afterward a park-keeper, who happened to pass that way, was horrified at the spectacle which met his view. On the ground lay a man weltering in his blood, and with his head horribly shattered in such a manner that it was easy to perceive he had placed the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth and blown his brains out. At a little distance a lady was stretched by the side of a gentleman the bosom of whose shirt was saturated with blood. He was quite dead, having received a mortal wound in the breast; but the lady, whom the park-keeper in dismay recognized to be the Princess ‘Amelia, was only in a deep swoon. Assistance was procured from the castle, whither the un- conscious lady was speedily removed, and on regaining her senses, she awoke to the full horror of all the frightful recol- lections which poured into her maddening brain. The particulars of so awful a tragedy could not be entirely hushed up; but at the inquest which was held upon the two bodies, the circumstance that the Princess Amelia was present when the murder and the suicide took place was carefully suppressed. To the world the tale went forth that Sir Richard Stamford was assassinated in Windsor Park by some man who was altogether unknown, and who put a period to his own existence immediately after the perpetra- CONnnicloooks (©)