His Other Wife: A Novel — page 244: what you’re looking at

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

236 “IN DURANCE VILE." It will be remembered that at the moment when Mathew Croft was about to make his ignominious exit from the hall of Lucerne, a dreadful cry of despair had issued from a woman who overlooked the scene from the landing above the stairway. Immediately afterward she had fallen to the floor, crouching there, like a frantic, hunted thing, until the cortege had passed out through the vestibule with the prisoner, and the door had clanged to behind them. The doctor, who remained transfixed with amaze and horror with Leda in the library, rushed out at the sound of that unearthly shriek, that pierced his brain as if it had issued from the depths of a lost soul. He sprang up the stairway, and attempted to lift the slender, groveling form ; but, with the wild gesture of a maniac, the woman flung his hands from her, and, casting the end of her black mantle over her head and face, vanished along the dim corridor to a room at the end of it, and, slamming its door behind her swift steps, the doctor heard her draw to the bolts. “‘What and who is she?” asked Doctor Wise of Leda, as he returned, pale and shivering with an undefinable sense of terror. ‘“Only the housekeeper—a poor, halfmad creature,” answered Leda, in whose face a vague fear had sett!ed. As she spoke she passed out from the library, and went to her own room. All night long Doctor Wise, with Mrs, Warren and Eomicbooks:¢o