The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 243: what you’re looking at

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

226 REYNOLDS’ WORKS in him she felt assured, from what she now heard, that they possessed a vindicator, should suspicion venture to breathe the surmise that perhaps, after all, Edmund’s wife had not come fairly by her death. — 3 The hour for retiring arrived, and Lady Saxondale saw, by the ghastly look which Edmund’s countenance now wore, that he was afraid of the horrors of the coming night. She said all she could to strengthen his mind: she bade him re- member that no human tongue save his and hers could pro- claim the secret, and that if he had nothing to fear at the hands of living beings, it was pure idiotic imbecility to give way to superstitious apprehensions. Edmund was encour- aged; but when he again found himself alone in his chamber, when his valet was dismissed, and he, disapparelled, was about to enter his couch, he was seized with such a sudden consternation that he could not have been more terrified if a veritable spectre had sprung up before him. Even as he hastened to leap into his bed, he dreaded lest his foot should be caught by the cold hand of death protruded from beneath it. And now did he indeed enter on another frightful ordeal, —an ordeal of hours of mental anguish and hideous im- aginings, frightful waking fancies alternating with the dreams of fitful and broken slumbers, wherein the wild cries of dying agony thrilling over the Trent, the ghastly counte- nance which had been upturned from the cold waters toward him, and all the circumstances of the horrible tragedy were paintully, poignantly, vividly revived. And there was that young nobleman, bearing a proud title, possessed of wealth, couched upon down, environed by velvet and satin draperies, in a magnificently furnished room, — there he was, in a state of mind to be envied only by any wretch whose guilt was discovered and who was about to expiate it on the scaffold. But if this were not the reality of Edmund’s posi- tion, he at least experienced all its horrors in his dreams, for again did he behold the tribunal of justice engaged in a trial for murder, where he figured as the principal; again did he behold the dark and ominous scaffold, with all the appalling paraphernalia of death, and himself the criminal about to die. When the cold winter morning sent its dull glimmering light in at the casements, it found the young man more ghastly, more haggard than before; and as he looked at him- Gomichbooks | :