The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

82 REYNOLDS’ WORKS She knew that the penalty of murder is death, and without pausing to estimate or conjecture the value of Lord Clandon’s denial of the charge, she was only too painfully assured that he would be pronounced guilty. She would now have given worlds to recall what she had done; she had suddenly re- covered, as it were, from the access of frenzy, the madness, in which she had taken so frightful a step against him. She pictured to herself all the horrors of the scaffold, and though she had never witnessed a public execution, yet her morbid imagination not merely conjured up all the real horrors thereof, but supplied fanciful ones to enhance the mental agony with which she was inspired. She awoke likewise, as it were, to a consciousness of her own position. She was penniless, she was houseless; she had renounced a happy home, had deserted a kind mistress, and had brought her- self to the point of wanting food. Still suffering from her ‘recent illness, she was now enfeebled and exhausted; she felt the gnawings of famine within her, and she had not a penny to purchase a morsel of bread. Her situation was in itself an almost adequate punishment for the foul, vindictive treachery of which she had been culpable. And remorse on one subject brought its companion- compunctions upon other points. Her conscience told her that she had been a murderess in inclination, although Heaven had intervened to frustrate her plans. She had sought the life of her mistress with the bright-pointed steel and likewise by means of the reptile of deadliest venom, — that kind mistress who had ever been so affectionate toward her. Remorse on this account was now lacerating her heart and rending her brain. Her imagination was full of horrors; vainly did she endeavour to dispel them. It seemed as if her mental gaze perforce remained fixed upon the most hideous objects, — ghastly spectres that hemmed her in around, circled about her, stood in her way, and laid their death-cold hands upon her. And the evil spirits of her own creed likewise presented their phantom-forms to her vision, — forms of the dreadfulest aspect. She was burning in the fires of her own tortured conscience; she was seething in a lake of molten lava conjured up by her own fevered imagina- tion. Though living, and upon earth, it appeared as if she were suffering the excruciations of hell itself. And thus wandered on the wretched Sagoonah through CORNIIEOOOKS (EO)