Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 168: what you’re looking at

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

LADY BESS’S HISTORY 151 the very instant it was told me Frank was still an inmate of that very school, and therefore within a tew yards of the spot where I sat, pale and weeping, a listener to the fictitious narrative of his death. I asked Mr. Jennings who the gentle- man (or nobleman, as I felt convinced he must be) was, but he declared that he himself knew not, adding, with a mysterious look, that both myself and Frank had been placed at the school under circumstances of secrecy into which he himself had not dared attempt to penetrate. In short, he gave me to understand that the gentleman (or nobleman) who had taken Frank to the school, and had fetched him away again, had used a fictitious name, that this same fictitious name had been appended to the letter containing the account of Frank’s death, and that he possessed no clue to the real name nor even to the abode of that gentleman (or nobleman). What could Ido? What could I say? The mystery thus observed — or, rather, which was represented to me as being observed — corre- sponded so well with all the past details of everything relating to my brother and myself that it wore an air of ster- ling truth. Wretched and almost heart-broken, I took my departure from the establishment, and proceeded by coach to London. I was resolved to make some endeavour to penetrate the mysteries connected with the past. “On my arrival in the metropolis, I took a cheap lodging and put myself into mourning for that brother whom I believed to be no more. I then proceeded to take a view of this cottage, so endeared to me as the home of my infancy and girlhood. It was shut up, and falling into decay. How I longed to live in it and settle myself down within its walls, but I had not the means. I proceeded on foot with the endeavour to find my way to that village where Mrs. Burnaby had taken us in the hired vehicle, and where the handsome equipage had waited to convey us to the house situated in the beautiful park. But the roads had most probably changed their appearance during the eight years which had elapsed since then, and at all events my memory served me not in respect to any features of the scenery which might guide me in the right direction. There is a complete laby- rinth of roads intersecting each other in all that neighbour- hood, so that I grew bewildered, and was compelled to give GoOmichdoo ‘“S (C(O)