The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

THE DOOMED WOMAN 81 tant minister attending upon her — to return at midnight. I shall walk up and down in the passage until you come forth again.”’ Thus speaking, he drew back the bolts and unfastened the chain of the massive door; the key grated horribly in the lock, and the next moment Jocelyn passed into the cell. The door closed behind him, and he was now alone with Mrs. Ranger. She was sitting upon the mean and sordid pallet stretched on a rough wooden bedstead. A candle stood upon a small table, and its light, dim and flickering, added to the ghastli- ness of the wretched woman’s appearance. Heavens! how altered was she! The ravages of old age had been fearfully aggravated by the corroding influences of dire anguish and ineffable horror during the last few weeks, and those ravages were no longer disguised by the abundant use of cosmetics and succedaneous artifices. No rouge or pearl-powder or refreshing lotions mitigated or disguised the hideousness of the wretched woman’s countenance: her skin was like wrinkled parchment upon her fleshless cheeks; her neck was scraggy and sallow even to loathsomeness; her eyes seemed set in deep caverns. She had either lost, or else no longer chose to wear, her false teeth, and her mouth had therefore fallen in. Her nose was frightfully thin, so that her profile had all the angular sharpness of old age, unredeemed by any of that benevolent or placid expression which at such a time of life so often prevents the countenance from being revoltingly ugly. Her hair still retained the black dye wherewith she had stained it at one of the latest toilets which she performed at the villa; but inasmuch as it had grown somewhat during her imprisonment, it was all perfectly white for about a third of an inch at the roots, a circumstance that added to the hideousness of her appearance. Altogether she seemed the vilest and most loathsome wreck of humanity upon which Jocelyn Loftus ever set his eyes. | The moment he entered the cell he found her looks fixed upon him. She had been gazing at the door while it opened, and there was a species of reptile-like glistening in her sunken eyes. Loftus could not help shuddering as he thus encoun- tered the looks of the wretched woman. When he had last seen her, it was a fortnight back, in the court of justice where she and her three accomplices were tried; but then (C(O) nn) (C KS a nin