The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 356: what you’re looking at

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

THE DISSECTING - ROOM 339 bodies that lay there, and as Emma at once recognized the countenance of her late paramour, Colonel Malpas, Julia recoiled in affright from the first glimpse which she caught of the features of the Earl of Curzon. Then did a succession of agonizing shrieks thrill forth, followed by hysterics and fainting. | These were the quick and alarming consequences of the tremendous spectacle. But from the ejaculations of horror and the agonizing syllables which first thrilled from the lips of Emma and Julia, Loftus at once gathered that the dead bodies which by a coincidence that almost seemed providen- tial had been brought hither that night were those of the Karl of Curzon and Colonel Malpas, the two young women’s paramours. Cruelly distressed at the turn which the drama had thus taken, having deepened into an excess of horror which he had little foreseen and was very far from intending, he hastened to throw open the door again, and by the doctor’s assistance he bore the now fainting girls, one after the other, away from the terrific scene into the dining-room. Agatha, who had instantaneously caught the infection of her two sisters’ wild terrors, and whose own nerves had been so painfully distended for some hours past as to be easily un- strung all in a moment, had not swooned outright, as Emma and Julia had done, but had burst forth into a kind of hyster- ical delirium, in which she unconsciously made all the con- fessions which Jocelyn Loftus had been so desirous to obtain. Meanwhile, as we before stated, Lady Prescott and the Countess of Curzon, unable to retire to rest, were sitting together in the drawing-room. All on a sudden terrific cries, screams, and hysterical shrieks reached their ears, and as in their present state of mind a far less ominous circumstance than even this would have been suificient to fill their souls with terror, they started up and exchanged looks of fearful import. Conscious guilt invariably associates with itself every occurrence that seems at all threatening, no matter how trivial or how foreign to its actual circumstances it may be. Thus was it that an indescribable horror, mingled with dread misgivings, seized at once upon the two patrician murderesses, and made them spring up from their seats as if suddenly galvanized. The screams continuing, the two ladies went forth on the landing. They heard the names of Curzon and Malpas thrilling forth upon voices fraught with ~ 4 CORNICLOOL <S) (C(O)