The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 331: what you’re looking at

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

300 THE COURT OF LONDON ing them with her present agonies, the thought of her position goaded her almost to madness. “ Wretch, wretch that I am!” she murmured to herself, in sharp and impatient accents, as she beat the bosom that palpitated with voluptuous feelings no more; ‘“‘ what a fear- ful turn have I given to the current of my existence! The other day I was rich, happy, and cradled in luxury; now I am the inmate of a dungeon cell. Though full of health and vigour, the hand of death lies cold upon my shoulder. My God! my God! what have I done? Into what an abyss of horrors have I plunged myself. Oh! is there no retreat? Is there no retracing the path of life for a few weeks — only a few weeks? Is it possible that I am in Newgate, that I shall be tried, that I shall hang to the gibbet? Oram I under the influence of a horrible dream — a fearful nightmare? Let me see,’ she continued, more slowly; and, as she sat in the depth of the impenetrable darkness of her dungeon, she placed her elbows upon her knees and rested her face upon her hands as she endeavoured to make her mental vision penetrate through the cloudiness and perplexity of her brain. ‘‘ Let me see,’’ she repeated, in a tono of measured precision, as if she sought to establish her points one by one. “ I am assuredly the person I believe myself to be — Mrs. Brace — the fashionable milliner. I have been lovely in my youth and handsome in my maturer years; I have been the mistress of the prince, I have been courted by all the highest, and richest, and noblest of the aristocracy. And yet as I now look back upon my life, it appears to have been only a dream, — one long, continuous dream of pleasure and voluptuousness, and not a reality. Yet there are circumstances in my career on which my retrospection looks with a sensation of pleasure. Yes, those hours of burning joys which I passed with the prince when first I knew him; ay, and those nights of bliss which I have spent in the arms of Hugene Montgomery. Ah! now another fact arises to my mind. I recollect that night — that night of alarm and menace — on which a man entered my chamber when Eugene was my companion. And that man — he was my husband! — and Eugene heard all that passed between him and me, and he sprang from the bed and they wrestled a moment, and then Hugene conducted my husband down-stairs and made him quit the house. Ah, how well do I remember all the details of that scene. But CONNIE YOLKS (E(0)