The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 205: what you’re looking at

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

THE MYSTERIES OF THE PAST 183 her utterly penniless, and in debt at the lodging where they had been staying. Her anguish exceeded all powers of description, delirium fastened upon her brain, and in a paroxysm of frenzy, when utterly irresponsible for her actions, the unhappy creature but too faithfully followed out the accursed hint which she had received, and which was doubtless uppermost in her wildering thoughts at the time. She laid violent hands upon her child, and when the awful deed was done, her reason awoke to a full sense of its stupendous atrocity. She was arrested and conveyed to prison, but as she and Bernard Audley had been living under an assumed name, the statement, when first appearing in the newspapers, afforded her sisters no clue to the fact that she was the guilty infanticide, even if that statement met their eyes at all. When Lilian’s trial, however, took place, her real name and that of her seducer transpired. She was acquitted of the charge, not precisely upon the ground of her delirious irresponsibility at the moment, but through some | flaw in the indictment, and which was detected by the ingenuity of the counsel whom the sheriffs provided for her. She was accordingly set free without even a sentence of imprisonment, but still she went forth from her gaol with the brand of the murderess upon her brow. When Lydia read in a newspaper the account of this trial, which account did happen to meet her eyes, she was at first overwhelmed with affliction; but summoning all her courage to her aid, she sped post-haste to the assize town where Lilian had gone through the fearful ordeal before the tribu- nal of justice. On arriving there, all she could learn was that the unhappy young woman, on being discharged, had instantaneously quitted the place, and no one knew what had become of her. Lydia accordingly returned to her cheerless home, now more cheerless than ever, because in her solitary hours she had the companionship of the most dis- tracting thoughts. She likewise, poor creature, was destined to prove the truth of the old adage that misfortunes never come alone, for soon after the incident just related the public company whence her income was derived stopped payment, and speedily closed its transactions in bankruptcy, affording little better than a mere nominal dividend. Forth- with to Melissa (or Mrs. Beckford, as she was called) did Lydia hie to make known this fresh calamity, a calamity (C(O) nn) (C 0)(0)©) (Sri inn