The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 337: what you’re looking at

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

320 : REYNOLDS’ WORKS and my sister up-stairs to a room where a lady was lying in bed. Two other ladies were seated by the side of the couch, and they spoke very kindly to me and my sister. They then quitted the room, and the moment they were gone, the lady who was in bed took us, kissed us a good deal, and eried very much. She was pale and ill, but so beautiful. We stayed with her some little time. I did not then ealeu- late how long, —I was too young for that, — but as far as I have since been able to remember, I should think at least an hour. During that interval the lady treated us very kindly, made me sit upon the bed, and played with my hair, patted my face, kissed me, and, in short, lavished upon me the tenderest endearments. She showed an equal _ affection toward my sister, and when Mrs. Burnaby was about to take us away again, the lady cried so bitterly that I remember both I and my sister cried also. The handsome carriage bore us back to the same spot where it had received us, and there we changed into the hired vehicle which had brought us thither in the earlier part of the day, and which now took us home again. ‘The following week my sister was sent to a boarding-school on the seacoast, but I remained with Mrs. Burnaby. ‘A year after the mysterious visit to the invalid lady, Mrs. Burnaby one evening took me into London in a hackney- coach, and I remember that it stopped at a place which seemed to me at the time like an old church, for it had a tower with an immense clock-face upon it. We entered this building, and as we ascended the stairs Mrs. Burnaby told me in a whisper that I was going to see the same lady whom I had visited in the country a year before. I was pleased, for I loved that lady on account of her affectionate kindness toward me, and because I felt 1¢ was sweet to love and think of her. I recollect a gentleman, dressed in black and with a star on his breast, coming out of a room and speaking for some time in a whisper to Mrs. Burnaby, so that I did not hear what they said. When their conversation was done, the gentleman led us along a passage into a magnificent room, where he left us. There were a great many pictures in that room, some representing male portraits with crowns on their heads and sceptres in their hands, and having seen little wood-engravings of similar portraits in the ‘ History of England ’ out of which I learned, I asked Mrs. Burnaby Gomichbooks m