The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 238: what you’re looking at

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

WESTMINSTER BRIDGE 209 she used a little more caution, this frightful misadventure would not have occurred, for she would perhaps have seen that the second individual whom she stopped to let pass, just before she flew back to the recess to deal the blow, was the very man for whom that blow was really intended. We must now return to the Princess Sophia, whom we left watching at the commencement of the bridge. She saw through the gloom of night the dark form of a man accost her brother on the opposite side of the way. She lingered for a few moments to mark whether they remained together, and observing that they did so, she of course felt convinced that it was the public executioner. She therefore hastened along the bridge, and as she drew near the recess where she was to behold her son, such indescribable feelings seized upon her that she felt as if she had not courage to proceed, but must turn back abruptly. The next moment, however, she blamed herself for yielding to such sensations, and then, by a sudden revulsion of the heart’s inscrutable emotions, she was seized with a fervid longing to gratify her curiosity and behold the offspring of her illicit love. Inspired, therefore, with all the warmth of these maternal feelings, impelled by the parental yearnings that thus suddenly asserted their empire over her heart, the Princess Sophia sped onward and gained the recess. At that moment the wind was lulled, the lamp was burning steadily overhead, and its light was thrown full into the recess. Heavens! what an appalling spectacle met the eyes of the princess! For there, within that nook of masonry, instead of her living son, whose animated countenance she expected to behold, a youth lay stretched upon the stone seat, his face ghastly and his eyes fixed like those of a corpse, and a dagger sticking deep in his breast. A wild cry swept along the bridge, a cry which no gushing wind at that moment absorbed or drowned, but a cry whose rending anguish thrilled to each extremity, rebounding from bank to bank, and reaching the ears of the prince regent and the public executioner. Cconniclooolks (C(O)