The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 302: what you’re looking at

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

268 THE COURT OF LONDON and in the meantime there would be ample leisure to resolve upon the most prudent course to be then adopted. Having thus succeeded in looking at her position with more calmness and deliberation than she had hitherto been enabled to call to her assistance from the moment the Bow Street officer fell a corpse at her feet, the milliner resolved to conceal the body in her bathroom adjoining. She, however, found it no easy task to drag so huge a mass into that place; but at length she accomplished this task, and, locking the door, she felt that she could begin to breathe more freely. She now hastened to lay aside her garments, which she had worn all night; but when she approached the mirror, she recoiled in horror and dismay at the ghastly countenance that was reflected therein. And yet those features were her own, and it was no spectral face which looked at her through the medium of that glass. But, great Heaven! what an effect had this one night of suffering, terror, guilt, and anguish produced upon the milliner! Her eyes were sunken and hollow, her lips were livid, her face was cadaverous where the rouge lay not upon it, and upon the cheeks that paint added to the ghastliness of her looks. “This will not do,’ murmured Mrs. Brace to herself. ‘““My appearance will excite the strangest suspicions. Nothing but my accustomed bath will effectually revive me.’’ And to take this bath it was necessary to return into the place whither she had dragged the corpse; but as the beams of morning grew brighter within the rooms, all superstitious terrors evaporated from the milliner’s breast. She accord- ingly laid aside her apparel, entered the bathroom, threw a cloth over the countenance of the dead body, and indulged in her wonted immersion in cold water. On issuing from the bathroom, she once more locked the door carefully; and, contemplating herself in the glass, mur- mured in a tone of mingled triumph and satisfaction, ‘“‘ The night I have passed was terrible, terrible; but it has not left a trace which the world’s eye shall observe.”’ The milliner then proceeded with her toilet; and in half an hour she descended to the apartment where her young ladies were assembled for breakfast. And no one could possibly have imagined nor would even have believed, if informed of the fact, that within the (C(O) AG 6)(0)()