The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 192: what you’re looking at

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

ANOTHER SCENE AT LEVESON HOUSE 167 ‘““Come, come,’’ said the Hangman, impatiently, “I really can’t understand you ladies of fashion a bit. You don’t mind employing a man like me to do all your dirty work, — dig a hole in your garden by night to bury a dead body, gammon a husband with hopes that are never to be fulfilled so as to send him to the scafiold — ” ‘Hush, hush! ’’ exclaimed Ernestina, once more starting from her seat, and this time in a positive agony of fearful excitement, for a flame was diffused throughout her entire being, molten lead appeared to be coursing through her veins, and the very chords of her brain seemed to be strung to the extremest verge of tension. ‘‘ Monster, fiend, devil, I will no longer endure this constant persecution at your hands! ”’ “What is the use of calling me names? ’’ interrupted the Hangman, with a savage growl, though his looks still burned with a fierce desire. ‘I tell you again that it is your own fault that I am now talking to you in this way. Seeing you in that gallery, in the midst of all those figures and pictures, put queer notions into my head, and as I watched you from behind the curtain where I was concealed, I thought to myself that, after all, you are one of the handsomest ladies I ever saw in my life. So I came to a certain resolution, and aiter the scene that took place just now, instead of leaving the house, I thought to myself that if I could only find your ladyship’s chamber I might make myself happy and comfortable there for the rest of the night. So I crept up-stairs to this floor, and as the door of this very room stood open, I peeped in. That glance was enough. By the mere look of the room, the knicknacks on the dressing- table, the mourning dresses hanging up in that clothes-press there that stands open, all these things told me in an instant that this was your ladyship’s chamber. So here I am, and here I mean to remain till daylight.” While the Hangman was thus speaking, Ernestina in- terrupted him not, because she was revolving a thousand different and wildly impossible schemes in her mind. To pretend to yield to his humour and poison him, or to procure a knife and stab him to the heart, or else to fetch a pistol from her uncle’s room and shoot him through the head, or, again, to alarm the house and have him thrust forth at any risk, — these were some of the projects which entered her CoOnniclooolks (C(O)