Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 266: what you’re looking at

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

A NIGHT OF TERRORS 249 shrink appalled, when remorse was present, a night that would make the rich rejoice in the possession of their warm rooms and their downy beds, and which at the same time would impel the poor to curse the existence that was doomed to be dragged on in those cold and cheerless garrets where not even a mattress protected the shivering limbs from the hard floor. For upwards of five minutes had Caroline Walters stood at the window, courting, as it were, the nipping chill of the wind to cool her brain, which seemed to be on fire, and her blood, which appeared to circulate like lightning in her veins, when, at the expiration of that brief interval, she heard a neighbouring window gently and slowly open. Searcely had this sound fallen upon her ear, when the conviction flashed to her mind that it was the casement of the adjacent room — the young lady’s chamber — which was thus opening, and while she was still listening with breathless attention, the faint, feeble, and half-stifled ery of a new-born child was waited to her through the air. In the next moment that cry was heard the least thing louder, and immediately afterward it rose into a small shrill shriek; then there was a plash in the waters beneath, a sound distinct from the ripplings against the piles, and which seemed as if something had been thrown into the river, and at the same instant the: window of the next room was shut down. If a scorpion had suddenly twined itself about the neck of Caroline Walters, a more horrible feeling could not have come over her than the sensation which now seized upon her brain, her heart, her entire being. For to her startled soul rushed the appalling conviction that a foul and atrocious murder had just been perpetrated, — the murder of a babe whose eyes had scarcely opened in this world ere they were closed again in the night of death, and that death inflicted, perhaps — nay, most probably — with the cognizance of the victim’s own mother! Staggering away from the window, the young woman fell upon her knees by the side of her bed; and, yielding to the deep agony of feelings so intensely wrung, she buried her face in her hands and endeavoured to pray: But her thoughts grew bewildered, her ideas became confused, and a frightful consternation seized upon her. Rising . CONNICOOOKS (C(O)