The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

REMORSE | 87 will be only to provoke me to wreak a vengeance upon you.” “Lady, if you would kill me,”’ answered the ayah, in a voice expressive of utter misery, “‘ you would be rendering me a service, at the same time that you would be inflicting a most righteous doom. You cannot loathe me more than I loathe myself; you cannot hold me in greater abhorrence than I am self-abhorred in the intensity of my own feelings. I have been mad, but now I have become lucid, and the clearness of my mind is horrible. Through the deep, clear waters of the rivers in our own native land have I beheld hideous monsters agitating in those profundities, and thus on looking down into the depths of my own soul do I discern things that appal and shock and horrify me. Although I must suffer terribly hereafter, I am suffering terribly now. There is a hell upon earth, and this hell has commenced with me. Now, lady, can you not have pity upon me, — you who are so good, so generous, so merciful? ”’ There was an indescribable anguish in Sagoonah’s tone, a kindred agony in her looks. Her large coal-black eyes ap- peared to burn with the fearful fires that were consuming her within, and their terrific lustre played like flashes about her brows, as if she had received a portion of the doom endured by the fallen angels in that pandemonium to which the blast- ing lightnings of Heaven had hurled them down. Christian and Christina looked on, appalled, dismayed, yet full of in- tensest loathing and horror, as if upon the corpse of one who had died of the plague and had come to bring its hideous infection unto them. Queen Indora rose from her seat; there was a deathlike pallor upon the delicate duskiness of her complexion, but her aspect was cold, stern, and im- placable. | ‘“‘ Sagoonah,” she said, ‘‘ it is impossible I can pardon you. There breathes not upon earth a more guilty creature than yourself. I look upon you as something more hideous, more envenomed, and more. dangerous than the very reptile which some time back you brought into the house that it might deal death to me with its poisoned fangs.”’ . _ “ Yes, lady, I merit these reproaches,”’ replied Sagoonah, ) “ and I know that you are acquainted with all my guilt. I am not ignorant that amidst the ravings of delirium my crimes were revealed. But, oh, suffer me to make the fullest GomiilGcaooks (©)