Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

106 THE COURT OF LONDON incredible rapidity I must have glanced at the scene at the jeweller’s, the dishonoured cheque, the examination of the bank-books, and the conversation which I had over- heard at the inn. Ramsey sat stupefied upon his chair; my wife became distracted, throwing herself at my feet, confessing all and everything of which I accused her and imploring my mercy and my pardon. The scene was terrible; my eyes must have flashed fire, my features must have been convulsed with rage. Sensations of deep and burning hatred filled my soul, and my brain was in a ferment. But still my wife knelt before me, with upturned eyes and clasped hands, and her penetrating, agonizing voice, rendered wild with despair, continued to beseech my forgiveness. Oh, even now that voice rings through my head, and the sound will never cease to vibrate there, — no, not when old age shall have made my ears impervious, —if I live so long! Suddenly I spurned her from me, and she fell back; but in the next moment she started up with a wild and piercing cry, and seizing a sharp fruit-knife that lay too ready at hand, plunged it with the energetic violence of despair into her own bosom. Both Ramsey and myself rushed forward at the same instant to arrest the hand which wielded the fatal weapon that flashed across our eyes in the lamplight; but we were too late. The wretched woman’s movement was as rapid as if under the influeace of a sudden shock of galvanism, and the blow was daalt with the vivid speed of the lightning. Oh, my God! my God! what awful feelings took possession of me when [ beheld that beauteous being weltering in her gore at my feet! Forgotten was her guilt, as if guilty she had never been; and I remembered only that she was lovely and beloved! ” The baronet ceased speaking, but burst forth into agoniz- ing lamentations, which sounded dreadful to the ears of the commercial traveller through the deep darkness. At any time and under any circumstances it is a sad and mournful thing for one man to hear another sobbing as if his heart would break; but when those passionate expres- sions of an ineffable woe acquire a tombiike and hollow intonation from the caverned echoes of a dungeon, and when they burden an atmosphere as black as the blackest night, the effect is solemnly and mysteriously appalling. GOMmicdooks (E(@) m