Read "The Leavenworth Case" by Anna Katharine Green online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Between the acting of a dreadful thing, And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream; The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of a man, Like to a little Kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection." Julius Cesar.
I am not a bad man; I am only an intense one. Ambition, love, jealousy, hatred, revenge -- transitory emotions with some, are terrific passions with me. To be sure, they are quiet and concealed ones, coiled serpents that make no stir till aroused; but then, deadly in their spring and relentless in their action. Those who have known me best have not known this. My own mother was ignorant of it. Often and often have I heard her say: "If Trueman only had more sensibility! If Trueman were not so indifferent to everything! In short, if Trueman had more power in him!"