The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

THE ROYAL LOVER’S VICTIM 83 exclaimed, raising her eyes with a holy earnestness, ‘* and give me hope, give me comfort, give me happiness. Alas! alas! no solace comes; my brain reels, I suffer excruciating agonies in the hell of mine own thoughts, ghastly forms rise up before me, hideous shapes surround me. Adieu, adieu to all refuge against myself. Miserable, miserable girl that I am, the torrent of my ideas whirls me along in a flood of burning lava. Avaunt, ye harrowing recollections, begone, ye racking memories! Oh, that the past were a blank, that the present were unfelt, unknown, and that I might waken to the view of a smiling future’s roseate dawn! But this may not be: I am lost, lost, beyond all redemption lost. Darkness closes in around me, a stupendous blackness, deeper than a funeral pall, is enveloping me. Earth and heaven are pass- ing away; all is an abyss, into which I am precipitating. Powers of Heaven! will ye not stay my headlong flight? Oh, mercy! mercy! mercy! ”’ - And covering her face with her hands, Octavia became convulsed with grief. The ravings of her tongue ceased, but her soul was agitated like the ocean when the storm sweeps over it. Upon her knees did she still remain, strong spasms shooting through the limbs that were thus bent under her, and likewise through the arms which had been wont to clasp the neck of her royal seducer. For some minutes did she thus endure the unspeakable anguish of thoughts and fancies and imaginings the nature of which no human conjecture can probe; but at length she slowly removed her hands from her countenance, and gradu- ally raised herself up from her kneeling posture. Then, sinking on a chair, she fell into a reverie so deep, so profound, that her physical as well as her moral nature was locked up in the thoughts which now absorbed her entire being. Motionless was she as the sculptured marble; not a finger moved, her bosom heaved not to the respiration, and. her lips remained slightly apart as they were at the instant when this waking trance seized upon her. So passionless was the repose of her countenance, so fixed were the eyes, so still was every feature, that had it not been for the faint shade of the pink upon her cheeks, she would have cheated the gaze of a beholder into the belief that she was indeed a statue. From the depths of her soul, whatever thoughts (C(O) Anyi } iS \