The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

4 THE COURT OF LONDON tatingly proceeded toward the door opening into the museum of artistic indelicacies and exquisite immoralities. But just at the very moment that the Hangman was passing by one of the mechanical chairs, Lady Ernestina, dropping the taper, threw herself suddenly upon him, and with one almost superhuman effort flung him, as it were, into the chair. The sharp clicking noise was heard of the mechanism giving way, and as a terrible imprecation burst from the ruffian’s lips, he was caught fast by the arms and shoulders, thus being rendered a captive and powerless all in a moment. The taper was extinguished, the room had been plunged into pitchy darkness, but Ernestina’s laugh of irony and triumph fell like that of a mocking fiend upon the Hang- man’s ears. ‘“Come, now,” he growled, savagely, ‘‘ what’s the use of such a scurvy trick as this? ”’ ‘The use of it is,’’ responded the lady, in low but meas- ured accents fraught with all the concentration of a fearful vengeance, ‘‘ to punish you as you deserve for the diabolical outrage you have perpetrated upon me this night. Mis- creant, monster that you are! I could have endured, I could even have forgiven, everything but that. The very foun- tains of my existence are now poisoned at their source, the springs of my life are envenomed and corrupted. You have made me feel what it is to be utterly polluted. I am now loathsome to myself; I feel that I have become a mass of moral rottenness. I do not want to live, I cannot live. But ere I die my vengeance must be wreaked upon you, a bitter, burning, implacable vengeance, such as can only come from a heart fed with the fires of hell. Such a ven- geance is this which I am inflieting upon you. For here will you remain to starve, to perish with hunger, with thirst, and in the exhaustion of frenzied and unavailing efforts to release yourself from that captivity.” “Devil of a woman that you are! I hate you now,” exclaimed Coffin, gnashing his teeth with rage, ‘‘ as much as I have been loving you.” “Oh, pollute not the sacred name of love by breathing it © from your toadlike lips! ’’ exclaimed Ernestina, her voice thrilling as if full well calculated to pierce the brain and to bear upon its breath the blight of a withering curse. ‘‘ Here will you linger for a brief space, enduring all the horrors of COMmniclooo (CO)