The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

THE DRAMA OF A NIGHT 30 her sister Julia, and then stole forth from the room. ‘The passage was, as we have before said, pitch-dark, Mrs. Ranger, be it remembered, having extinguished the lamp, but Emma had no difficulty in finding her way to her own chamber, where she hastily put on a cloak and bonnet. She then crept to the staircase, down which she stole noiselessly as a sprite. Emerging forth from the back entrance of the villa, Emma paused for a moment as she found herself in the dark- ness, the silence, and the solitude of the spacious grounds in the rear of the dwelling. But, summoning all her fortitude to her aid, she sped forward along a well-known pathway. Shapes of terror, darker than the darkness, seemed to flit around her, and presently a shriek rose to the very tip of her tongue as she all of a sudden caught a glimpse of some- thing white and shapely as a human form, that appeared to stand forth out of the surrounding obscurity. But the con- viction flashed upon her mind that it was but one of the marble statues ornamenting the garden which had thus for a moment scared her, and passing the phantom-looking object quickly by, she felt her courage quickly revive again. Every now and then she paused to listen, but no sound could she hear, save the moaning of the wind and the mur- muring of the agitated waters of Lake Leman. Yes, the rus- tling of the leaves likewise did she hear, as the night-breeze sighed amidst the dewy verdure of the garden, and more than once she fancied that some one was about to rush forth upon her from amidst the trees. Lightly, too, as the tripped along, her footsteps raised echoes which fell upon her ear like the sounds of pursuit, and two or three times she turned abruptly around as if with the desperate resolution of facing some danger which she felt to be advancing from amidst the surrounding gloom. Ever and anon, too, an ice-chill like that of death would strike to her heart, as the idea struck her that a hand, heavy as that of the dead, was full likely to be laid upon her shoulder, and once or twice as an overhanging bough touched her she felt a sudden inclination to shriek out in the accents of intensest horror. Thus, during the few minutes that it took the young lady to traverse the grounds from the back entrance of the villa to the door in the wall opening on the by-road, did she pass through a dozen different phases of exquisite agony, and on: y | CORNICLOOOLKS (CO) im