The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 360: what you’re looking at

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

THE DISSECTING - ROOM 043 how it was indeed she who had given birth to the child whose corpse was in the dissecting-room, and Gertrude shuddered as she thus listened to those wild ravings relative to the dead. While casting her eyes in the vagueness of a growing terror around, she observed the other doors which stood open, and catching a glimpse of the sinister shapes that lay on the table in the dissecting-room, thither was she impelled by a fearful curiosity, as terrible as it was irresistible. Lntering that room, she beheld the child to which allusion had just been made in her hearing, and she also beheld the two corpses that lay stretched on the same table. Heavens! one was Malpas, her mistress’s enemy, and the other was her mis- tress’s husband. Yes, there was the Earl of Curzon, stark and lifeless, — he who had revelled in the virginity of Gertrude’s own charms, there he lay, a mere inanimate heap. Gertrude stood confounded. Of the double crime per- petrated that night by her mistress and Lady Prescott at the old jetty, she knew not; therefore well indeed might she be amazed and thus transfixed with mingled wonderment and horror on beholding those two corpses stretched out there. Staggering away, not knowing what to think, scarcely daring to think at all, but with terrible suspicions springing up in her mind, she retraced her steps into the hall, and, still euided by the irresistible feeling of curiosity which amounted almost to a presentiment, she advanced toward the parlour door. But now, as she reached the threshold of that sombre- looking little room, a cry, a wild and terrible cry, thrilling high above the hysterical outpourings of Agatha in the dining-room, burst agonizingly from the lips of the lady’s- maid, as with the first glance her eyes embraced all the horrors of the scene. For there sat her mistress in a large armchair, already livid and ghastly with the changing hues of a death produced by a quick and powerful poison, while on the floor, with glassy eyes that seemed to stare up at her awiully, was stretched Lady Prescott, also becoming hideous beneath the finger of death. Something seemed to give way in Gertrude’s brain as she sent forth that thrilling, rending, piercing ery; then she stood motionless and silent for a few instants, and then, as persons issued from the drawing-room, the horrible laugh | of a maniac burst from her lips, ECORNICLOO! CS (C(O) im