The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 149: what you’re looking at

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

SCENES IN THE DANE JOHN 131 your attention not been drawn toward me by the cry that I uttered on meeting you here? ”’ ‘‘T should have known you, Lilian; but you are greatly altered,’ answered Mrs. Owen, still surveying her sister with a mournful interest. “ Ah! it is not so much the lapse of time,’ answered Lilian, shaking her head slowly and sorrowfully, “ as blighted love and the consciousness of crime.” ‘“ Crime? ” ejaculated Mrs. Owen, with a shudder. ‘‘ Then it was true? Heavens! do not say so, Lilian.” “ Yes, alas, too true,” responded the unhappy woman. Then sweeping her eyes up and down the avenue to assure herself that there were no observers and no listeners, she said, ‘‘ Too true, indeed. The poor innocent, in a paroxysm of frenzy I killed 3 “Oh, but it was not deliberately done?’ Mrs. Owen hastened to observe, anxious to suggest an excuse for her sister’s crime, even though it should be an imaginary pallia- tion. ‘‘ Heavens, no! I was wild and mad at the moment,” cried Lilian. Then, in a slower and more solemn voice, she added, ‘‘ But the crime is not the less rankling here,” and she laid her hand upon her heart. ‘‘ Though acquitted through a flaw in the indictment, how could I show my face to those again who knew me? No, not even to my own sisters dared I appear.’’ ‘And yet, Lilian, we cast you not off,” observed Mrs. Owen; “ for neither I nor Melissa were prudes, and Lydia was too good, too virtuous, too noble-hearted, not to have received you with open arms.’ “TJ dare say you have long thought me dead?” said Lilian, in a melancholy tone, and after a pause. od feared so. What else could I think? But what of Lydia? Have you ever obtained any tidings of her? What has become of her? ’”’ asked Mrs. Owen. ‘She lives, and to say that she lives,” replied Lilian, ‘‘1s to express the very outside.” ‘‘ What mean you? ”’ demanded Mrs. Owen, with mingled impatience and astonishment. ‘“T mean,” was the response, “ that our sister Lydia is alive, but that she is utterly unconscious of everything which passes around her. Paralysis has for three years past Comicoooe S (CO in