The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 290: what you’re looking at

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

256 THE COURT OF LONDON where buried? And was Mrs. Brace able to adopt any decisive step without assistance? No, it was impossible; and the wretched woman, seating herself upon a chair, covered her face with her hands and gave way to all the bitterness of her harrowing reflections. Alone with a corpse! This was the appalling conviction that was uppermost in her mind. In a few minutes she felt a cold shudder, a glacial tremor, stealing over her; and it struck her disordered fancy that some terrible phantom had risen slowly and noiselessly up before her and was gazing upon her with its dull, glassy, lustreless eyes. Then she abruptly removed her hands from her countenance; and her looks, wild with apprehension, were cast swiftly around the room, settling irresistibly at length upon the corpse that lay stretched on the floor. The murderess started to her feet. Was she the sport of some horrible vision, the victim of some hideous nightmare, or was it really true that she had killed a human being, and that the corpse was there, at her feet? Once more she car- ried her hands to her head, but it was not this time to cover her face; no, it was to press her fingers to her throbbing brows and thereby steady her thoughts, if possible. For her brain, oh, it reeled, it reeled; and those thoughts, oh, they whirled, they whirled; and it seemed as if her scalp had been torn off and some demon was pouring molten lead upon the palpitating, seething, quivering cerebral mass. Just Heaven! her punishment had already begun on earth, and the red right arm of God was already stretched out to avenge that foul and atrocious murder. Alone with the corpse of her victim! Oh, this was the conviction that hemmed her in with an adamantine wall, and imbued with its own harrowing influence all the thoughts which swept through her brain and all the emotions which rolled their tidal fury through her breast. Was it possible that she could have been so mad, so insane, so rabid, so foolish, as to perpetrate a deed which thus conjured up a myriad perils to environ her, as if with a host of insatiate demons panting for her destruction, her ruin, her blood? But, hark! what sound was that which made her start so convulsively? Was it a guttural moan from the throat of the corpse at her feet? Was it the wail of the restless spirit which had only been parted a few minutes from its mortal COMicbooolkks (CO)