The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 226: what you’re looking at

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

206 | REYNOLDS’ WORKS something that lies as heavy as lead on my bosom, and pre- vents me from sleeping at night. I wish I could tell it. I thought I could just now; I said it all over to myself, just as I used to say my prayers when I was a child, but it has all gone out of my head.”’ ‘“‘ What can it be?” asked Captain Stanley, much inter- ested in the woman’s words and manner, for he felt con- vinced that it was not a mere meaningless phase of her mad- ness, but that it was this very madness itself which pre- vented her from giving lucid pen to something that she had really to reveal. ‘“* What is it, you ask?” she said, with a sudden brighten- ing up of her hitherto vacant desponding look. ‘‘ Ah! now there is a gleam shooting into my mind — yes, yes, it is about that dreadful murder — ”’ “The murder? ”’ ejaculated Stanley, all the interest he had previously felt being immensely enhanced in a moment. ‘“‘ Ah, it is all gone out of my memory again,” she said, shaking her head dolefully; ‘‘ you made me start; you drove it away. It is of no use,” and with these words she plunged abruptly into the copse, thus disappearing from the view of the amazed captain and his equally astonished groom. ‘“‘ There is something extraordinary in this,’ said Stanley to the domestic; ‘‘ that woman evidently knows something, but the impression of it is upon her mind like that of an unusual object upon the mind of a child, — too dim and uncertain to be properly explained. We will return at once to the hall and tell my father what has taken place. Mr. Redcliffe, too, said he should be back by luncheon-time, and this is intelligence which he will be deeply interested to receive.” Captain Stanley accordingly took the nearest route to the hall, which he reached just as Mr. Redcliffe was alighting from the baronet’s carriage, which had taken him into Liverpool. Sir William Stanley, his son, and their guest were speedily closeted together, and the interview between the young gentleman and Crazy Jane was the subject of deliberation. “This is indeed most important,’”’ observed Mr. Redcliffe, ‘for it is evidently the same subject to which the woman alluded when we met her at the fence, and when she said that she had something new upon her mind.” CORMICLOOOK