The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 294: what you’re looking at

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

CONFESSION OF ROMANTIC LOVE 204 the affair is of an importance too grave and too vital to have allowed me to hesitate at any punctilio or formality in my endeavour to convey that document direct to the princess. As for the aspersions on my own character, you shall pres- ently judge of what value they are and what faith ts to be put in them.”’ Jocelyn Loftus then proceeded, circumstantially and minutely, to relate all that he had discovered, all that he had done, all that he had endured, and all that he now proposed to do, in respect to the affairs of the Princess of Wales. He began by stating who he really was, wherefore he had adopted a fictitious name, and why he had abjured his real one. He went on to explain how he had first fallen in with Mary Owen, from whose lips he learned all the par- ticulars of the conspiracy existing against the Princess of Wales, how he had accompanied Agatha, Emma, and Julia _ Owen irom Calais to Paris, how he had been the object ot their licentious advances, how he had been imprisoned in the preiecture, where Julia had practised her arts uncer the name of Laura Linden, how he had been rescued from his captivity, how he had returned to England and procured the letter of introduction from the Princess Sophia, how he had set off on a second expedition to the Continent, but had been arrested and imprisoned at Grenoble until within the last few days, how, on obtaining his release, he had sped toward Geneva, and how he had fallen in with Lady Prescott, which circumstance had led to his taking up his abode at Doctor Maravelli’s house. Ot course he delicately suppressed the fact that Lady Prescott had attempted self-destruction, and without com- mitting himself to an untruth, he glanced over the event in such a manner which left Bergami to surmise that it was an accidental fall into the water. Continuing his narrative, herelated the startling things which he had learned and which had happened since his arrival beneath the phy- sician’s roof, describing all that he had elicited from Maravelli, the fishing up of the dead child, and the telltale Initials on the flannel wrapper and the cambric handker- chief. _ To say that Bergami was amazed, were to say nothing, but to describe him as passing through a strange series of exciting phases of feeling, as Jocelyn successively developed Gomicdooksecom