The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 292: what you’re looking at

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

258 THE COURT OF LONDON from her view. But during the few moments that she thus veiled her physical vision, her feverish fancy acquired ten thousand times more activity than ever, and her imagination conjured up myriads of frightful shapes and terrific forms to harrow her with all the dread phantasmagoria of the grave. Then, unable to endure this exquisite refinement of torture, she opened her eyes again, and again did they irre- sistibly settle upon the face of that corpse with which she was thus alone. Goaded almost to madness, feeling that her senses were abandoning her, and yet not daring to fly from the room nor to summon assistance, the miserable woman once more caught eagerly at the idea of suicide which flashed back into her heated brain; and, rushing to the cupboard, she was about to seize upon the phial of Prussic acid, when her unquiet conscience made her fling a startled glance to her right and to her left as she was about to commit this new crime. And then, with an ineffable aggravation of all the horror which previously filled her soul, did she suddenly become transfixed to the spot, while her entire frame grew all in a moment paralyzed and petrified; for the furtive look which she had thrown around was arrested once again by the phantom face that her disordered imagination depicted as gazing in upon her through the window. So strong was the delusion that during the minute which elapsed while Mrs. Brace was thus held in statue-like thral- dom, unable to stir a limb, unable to give utterance to a sound, unable also to withdraw her eyes from that object of terrible attraction, during this minute of an appalling fascination, we say, her mind exercised an activity and an inventiveness which only added to the horrors of her thoughts and enhanced the poignancy of her mental excruciation. For the face which thus seemed to be looking in upon her took all the ghastly lineaments of the grave: its flesh was of that yellowish white which marks the corpse, its eyes were fixed with stony, lustreless, and yet not altogether inexpressive glare, its black brows were strongly pencilled above the deep cavernous sockets wherein the glassy orbs were set, and the lips were thin and of a bluish pallor. All these characteristics did the horror-stricken woman behold, or, rather, fancy that she beheld; for the entire portraiture, with its supernal vividness, was nothing more than the GoMmilGebdooksnco