Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

152 y REYNOLDS WORKS up the search after having vainly prosecuted it for two or three days. ‘“My funds were by this time totally =x free) and I scarcely knew what to do. I wrote to Kate Marshall, —. but with great reluctance, — requesting a temporary ee from her, and the return of post brought me a bank-note for twenty pounds. Thus I was relieved of anxiety for the immediate means of subsistence, and resolving to lose-no time, | endeavoured to procure another situation as a gov- erness. JI answered advertisements in the newspapers, called at the residences of the parties advertising, but, being un- - able to give any reference as to past character, experienced a cold refusal everywhere. ‘Then IJ inserted advertisements asking for such a situation, and frankly stating that, for reasons which I would explain orally, I was unable to offer testimonials, but these appeals elicited not a single response. Meanwhile weeks were slipping on, my money was diminish- ing, and I was oppressed by serious apprehensions for the future. Besides, | had contracted two debts that lay heavy enough upon my mind: one to the mayor’s wife in the Pyrenean village, the other to Kate Marshall; and though I was well aware that they would neither expect to be paid very promptly, and the latter not at all until I should be fully able, yet I did not like the idea of those debts. I thought of taking in work, but I never was a good hand with the needle. J however made application at different places for such work, with the resolution to do anything to earn an honest livelihood, but I experienced no success. In process of time my money disappeared. Then I lived by making away with my articles of clothing, till at length | was reduced to such a condition that I was penniless, with long arrears of rent owing to a hard-hearted landlady, and without a single thing left to raise money upon. “Tt was in the middle of winter that one bleak, horrible night, between nine and ten o’clock, I was turned out of my lodging. I had not a friend to whom I could go; I had not even a single acquaintance in London of whom I could-ask the slightest favour. I wandered about all that wretched night. Be assured that I fell in the way of temptations by agin to which I might at once have possessed gold. But no! sooner than abandon myself to that hideous alter- native, I was fully resolved to put an end to my existence. Gomicbooks.co