The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 174: what you’re looking at

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

152 THE COURT OF LONDON in his power, yet not for worlds dared he lay a finger upon her more. The feeling that now inspired him was that of an awful superstition. The flame of his maddening passions had been extinguished in a moment, and flying from the room, pre- cipitating himself down the stairs, he rushed from the house as if pursued by some hideous phantom from the grave or some avenging spirit from the world which lies beyond it. Pause we here for a few moments to explain the phenome- non which had just occurred. As the reader is well aware, it was three years since Miss Stanley (as we had better con- tinue to call her, at least for the present, rather than by her real name of Halkin) was stricken with the paralysis that had deprived her of speech and reason. For those three years had she lived on, utterly unconscious of what was passing around her, for although she retained the faculties of sight and hearing, yet all images that met her eyes were reflected in a brain which comprehended them not, and the same was it with all sounds that reached her ears. But the psychological philosopher and the physiological inquirer need only be appealed to in order to testify unto the fact that even in such a prostrate condition of mind and body as that in which Miss Stanley lay stretched and stricken down for three long years it needs but some incident of a very extraordinary character to dissolve the bonds of paralysis and loosen the mental and physical energies from the shackles placed upon them. So was it in this case. Louisa’s piercing shrieks had thrilled through her aunt’s brain. The spell was dissolved in a moment, she snapped, as it were, the chains which held her fast, and mechanically, without having her ideas sufficiently collected even to ask herself what it could all mean, she hastened to her niece’s chamber. She came in time to save that excellent girl’s virtue from the power of the ravisher, in time, too, to save her lips from the pollution of his caresses, and, as we have already seen, the infamous man, stricken with an awful consternation and feeling at the moment that Heaven itself warred against his diabolical purpose, fled precipitately in terror and dismay. What words can express all the varied emotions which Louisa experienced in those few brief instants which elapsed comicloooks (C(O) im