The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 204: what you’re looking at

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

182 THE COURT OF LONDON To fly into a passion and assume a proud and independent bearing was the last resource of a young woman taken to task by an elder sister and dreading to be taxed with what was really the truth. It was not therefore the kind-hearted Lydia’s fault that this quarrel took place. She said and did everything conciliatory, but though all the while displaying so rebellious a spirit, Lilian had not the real courage to throw herself into Lydia’s arms and reveal the truth. At her next interview with Bernard Audley she gave way to her feelings to such an extent that he grew frightened, and when she besought him to take her away with him to some distant part, even if he could not make her his wife at the moment, he yielded to her demand. She fled with him, and Lydia, the eldest sister, was now left alone in her cheerless and forsaken abode. She would have followed Lilian, but could obtain no clue concerning her. She went to London and communi- cated the sad intelligence to Melissa, who was much affected. She likewise found out where her sister Anne was living with Mr. Owen, and to her also did she tell the tale. But Mrs. Owen (as she was styled) treated it with characteristic lightness, saying that she had no doubt Lilian had consulted her own happiness in the course she had adopted. Poor Lydia, well-nigh broken-hearted, returned to her forlorn dwelling near Rochester, to brood over her sorrows in secrecy and solitude. Meanwhile Lilian had fled away with Bernard Audley. They were but mere girl and boy, neither of them being twenty-one at the time. The young man had a tolerable allowance from his parents, but he was naturally extrava- gant, as well as heartless and unprincipled, and his passion for Lilian soon cooling, he found her a burden. They travelled about from one fashionable watering-place to another, until the time arrived for Lilian to become a mother, and then she gave birth to a male child. Scarcely was she recovered from her confinement when her unscrupulous seducer proposed, without much circumlocution, that they should make away with their innocent offspring, as it was a sore burden upon them. She could scarcely believe her ears, and when he saw that she regarded him with inde- scribable horror, he affected to turn it off by declaring that he did but say so in jest and in order to try her. Shortly afterward he abandoned her suddenly, leaving comicloooks (CO)