The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 350: what you’re looking at

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

THE LAMB AMONGST THE WOLVES © 319 On the other hand, Lady Ernestina had experienced positive proof that her uncle employed a procuress, the infamous Mrs. Gale, to entice young females to her house in order to appease his brutal lusts. Moreover, during his absence in Paris, and since the adventure with the Hang- man in the treacherous chair, she had penetrated into the gallery of paintings and sculptures, and had thus obtained a deeper, ay, the deepest, insight into the hideous sensuality of her uncle’s character. Consquently, knowing all these things of each other, and mutually aware, too, that all these things were thus known, it would have been the most absurd of mockeries to maintain any longer the semblance of deli- cate feeling, propriety, or virtue; and therefore it seemed as if the marquis, the moment he returned from Paris, was fully prepared to throw off the mask altogether. Such indeed was his intention; and such was the interpretation that Ernestina put upon his conduct when he whispered the following words in her ear after Louisa had been conducted to her chamber: “I need not tell you wherefore I have brought this girl hither. She is innocent as a lamb, and artless as a child; it is for you to initiate her in the mysteries of life, so that when I choose to address her in the language of passion, she may not colour with shame, but with desire.”’ Thus had the marquis spoken to his niece on the preceding evening, after having consigned Louisa to her care, and just before he went to pay that visit to the prince at Carlton House which has been mentioned in a preceding chapter. It was a hideous thing for an uncle thus to address a niece, a still more hideous thing that a niece should consent to obey such instructions on the part of an uncle. And it may seem the more dreadful, too, inasmuch as not many weeks had elapsed since that uncle and that niece were sitting, shamefaced and weeping, in the presence of each other, at the mutual discoveries of frailty and demoralization which were then made. But the instant the mask thus fell from their countenances the barrier of delicacy was speedily annihilated between them; and, moreover, be it observed that in the aristocratic mind the rank weeds of vice and crime spring up, when once they have germinated, with an astonishing rapidity, and speedily bloom in all their poisoned luxuriance in the heated atmosphere of fashionable life. EOMIIGIOOKS (CO)