The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 234: what you’re looking at

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

THE RIVER 217 intimating that it would not be necessary for him to call again until the morrow. In the course of the afternoon the corpse of the drowned lady was fished up from the depths of the Trent, and was conveyed to the castle. Hawkshaw un- dertook to break to Edmund the intelligence that the body had been recovered, and that it was then lying beneath that roof. As a matter of course, there was a fresh scene of apparent erief and anguish on the part of the young nobleman, and Hawkshaw again said and did all he could to strengthen and console him. When Edmund thought fit to suffer himself to be somewhat tranquillized, the squire delicately hinted that it would be as well if his mother were communicated with by that day’s post; and the steward was instructed to write at once to her ladyship at Saxondale House in Lon- don, Edmund stating that although it was his mother’s original intention to proceed to the Continent forthwith, in order to pass the remainder of the winter in Italy, he had no doubt she purposed to tarry aday in the metropolis, and would thus receive the letter. It was accordingly des- patched, and Mr. Hawkshaw, after generously remaining with Edmund until a late hour in the evening, took his departure for his own abode. Night came, — the first night which this youthful mur- derer had to pass alone after the perpetration of his stupen- dous crime. It was a night which he indeed dreaded, a night which he foresaw would be fraught with ineffable horrors for himself. At first he thought of accepting the proposal which his valet made to sit up with him, but then he feared lest in his sleep — if he could sleep — he might give utterance to words that would betray the enormity of his guilt; and the scaffold had never ceased to loom, dark and ominous, be- fore his eyes from the moment that the voice of conscience rang the word ‘‘ Murderer ”’ in his ears. So the valet’s pres- ence was dispensed with, and at eleven o’clock on this night, the first succeeding his crime, Edmund was alone. Alone in that chamber which he had occupied in company with his wife, — the wife who was no more, the wife whom he himself had done to death! Ah, it was a loneliness in one sense, an awful loneliness, but in another it was no loneliness at all. He had the companionship of his thoughts, a horrible com- panionship. His mind had the companionship of the dread images which peopled it, a frightful companionship. And Gomicdoo cS (F(0)