The master criminal

Seated at an open casement looking out into the London night was a woman. Her hands grasped each other over her knee with a tense grip which gave the lie to the calm of her face. Hers was a face to which in repose Rossetti would have woven an adoring sonnet, though not as to another “lazy, laughing, languid Jenny, fond of a kiss, and fond of a guinea,” but a sonnet of purity and peace. Yet if the sonnet had been written, and the woman had read, the full scarlet lips which seemed to have gathered into them all the colour from her face, would have parted in scornful laughter....FROM THE BOOKS.