The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 166: what you’re looking at

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

TERROR 145 This was the most reasonable supposition that presented itself to Ernestina’s mind, and she felt convinced it must be a correct one. For she had heard from the marquis that it was Daniel Coffin who had brought Ariadne Varian to Leveson House, and therefore it did not appear extraordinary that he should be again employed in the nobleman’s service. Having come to the conclusion that she had thus solved the mystery of Daniel Coffin’s presence there on the present occasion, Lady Ernestina became deeply anxious to quit the gallery and return to herown room. She felt as if she were in the vicinage of some fearful though hidden danger. It was the feeling which may be supposed to inspire the Hindu trav- eller when passing beneath the overhanging branches of a wood where boa-constrictors are known to lie in ambush, ready to dart down upon their prey. Indeed, nothing could equal — and assuredly nothing could transcend — the horror which Ernestina entertained for that terrible individual, — not so much because she knew him to be the most consum- mate of scoundrels, nor because he was the public execu- tioner, whose very hands might almost be supposed to feel clammy with the touch of the strangled dead, but because he had dug the grave in which her paramour was interred at the Blackheath villa. Conquering her emotions as well as she was able, and assuming as calm and placid a demeanour as she could possibly put on, Ernestina rose from the chair, took the candle, and moved toward the door. But she felt herself shuddering, she felt herself quailing, she felt, too, that it was almost impossible to look unconcerned, or to seem as if she fancied herself alone in that place; for her very sensations told her that from behind the curtain near the door, the sinister looks of the public executioner were fixed upon her. Recurring to the illustration of the Hindu traveller, we may observe that the effect was with Lady Ernestina the same as if she had to pass a place whence a snake would fling forth its hideous length and wind itself with rapid whirling coils around her, and as if she already beheld the eyes of the reptile gleaming forth at her from its ambush. Thus, with increasing trepidation, — with a nervousness rapidly amounting to an excruciation, — did she ¢dvance toward the door. She was apparently looking straight forward, and yet with a sort of sidelong gaze was she watching that cConniclooolkks (C(O)