Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 188: what you’re looking at

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

178 | OOTAVIA’S PRIDE. Jane West drew ica with a voliiidert and drew out from under her shawl a small Indian box. ‘‘Doctor Morley once showed me this box in the secret drawer of his secretaire. Hesaid when he was gone I was to take it in charge, and deliver it myself to the address. [ have been at much pains and some peril to fulfill the re- quest, but it is here at last. ‘Take it, madam, and oh! if your conscience is really racked as you declare, confess be- fore Heaven the terrible wrong you have done to that sainted man. It is the diary of his life since you parted with him that night of the sailing of the Australian packet. It may explain to you still more thoroughly his self-abnegation and devotion. He returns to you also a packet of papers which he held all the time; a mass of proof which he had only to show to the world, and his own fair name would have shown out more brightly still, and the guilt of another been estab- lished beyond the whispering of a doubt. And this over- whelming proof has lain there, in that secret drawer in Sydney, all these years, and Doctor Morley, with the iron | cutting into his soul, has borne and kept silence.” Lady Mary started up, her eyes glittering with wild alarm. ‘‘You knew it all, all?” she cried; ‘‘ you, a stranger?” ‘Be at peace,” said Jane, almost contemptuously. ‘‘ I am Doctor Morley’s friend; because he wished it, not to save. you, I also bury this thing forever. But it is hard, bitter hard,” she murmured, ina deeper tone. ‘‘ When I think of the life you blighted; when I remember what might have been, even in the latter days, but for you, | am tempted to forget I have Been taught a Christian spirit; I na to spurn and curse you.” “There is no need,” said Lady Falkner, in hotter voice. ‘‘T am already cursed. Here and here!” .And she laid her thin hands, one upon her forehead and ~ comicboo co