The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 314: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXXIII THE EXCITEMENT AND TERRORS OF GUILT WE must now return to Mrs. Brace, and take up the thread of her adventures which we were compelled to relinquish for a moment. Although she continued to wear a smiling face in the presence of her young ladies, and although, when customers came, she assumed an exterior which was admirably calcu- lated to produce the impression that no woman in the uni- verse enjoyed a mental tranquillity more complete than her own, yet throughout the livelong day did she in reality endure the tortures of the damned. Again must we observe that this poignancy of feeling arose not so much from remorse as from alarm, vexation, and despair at the perilous position in which she had placed her- self. For every minute recurred the question, what was she to do with the body, and the oftener she put this interrog- atory to herself, the more bewildered did she become. Then, the necessity of maintaining a pleasant exterior was a task very far from being unaccompanied with difficulty; and she felt that it was hard indeed, nay, fraught with a mental agony the most acute, to wreathe her lips into smiles while a vulture was gnawing at her heart. In the course of the forenoon, Harriet applied to her for the key of the bathchamber, that the housemaid might per- form her usual duties there; and Mrs. Brace was compelled to invent some excuse the triviality of which made her blush up to the very hair of her head as she uttered it, and then the colour disappeared as rapidly with the mortal terror that struck to her heart. But Harriet noticed not that the apology was ridiculous or that there was anything peculiar in the manner of her mistress. It was conscience which thus 280 Gomi re) NOOKS (E(o)