The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 300: what you’re looking at

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

266 THE COURT OF LONDON hand of the corpse thus slowly began to wander over the luxuriant globe that palpitated no longer in wanton enjoy- ment, but was motionless as the breast of the marble statue, at the same instant was it the horrified woman became aware that the dead body of the murdered man was still drawing itself closer and closer to her side. And then it really appeared to her as if a scream rose up to the very tip of her tongue, but was stopped by the closed portals formed by her compressed lips; and thus still did her mortal anguish continue to grow the more excruciating from her utter inability to give expression to it. From her bosom the hand passed slowly, ah! and with a revolting touch, like that of a slimy serpent, along the neck of the tortured woman, as she thus lay motionless on the floor. Over her chin went the hand, then it passed gra- diently upon her left cheek, and all this while the corpse was drawing close up to her right side. At length the hand quitted her countenance, and the arm wound itself by degrees about her neck, the dead body turning itself toward her the while. And now the corpse raised itself sufficiently to stoop over and place its cold countenance in contact with the cheek of the milliner; and the arm that circled her neck appeared to press her lovingly. O Heaven! who can describe the hideousness, the revolting loathsomeness, the mortal horror of that unnatural embrace? But, as if the cup of gall and filth and abomination should be filled even to the overflowing, as if there should be nothing required to render this mon- strous drama as complete in all its details as possible, and as if this foretaste of posthumous punishment were to be crowned with all the horrors conceivable by mortal imagina- tion, the corpse slowly, but surely and resolutely, glued its lips to the mouth of the milliner and sent with its awful caress an ice-chill throughout her whole frame. The powers of human endurance were now tested to the extreme, the strength of the human intellect was tried to the last degree. A terrible revulsion ensued all in a moment; the limbs of the woman recovered their power of movement, her jaws were unlocked, and with a cry of mingled horror and anguish she started up. The light of morning was streaming in between the cur- tains; and as the milliner cast her eyes wildly around her, COMMIELOO© S CO) mM