The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 223: what you’re looking at

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

198 REYNOLDS’ WORKS The next witness who was called was a female answering to the name of Jane Barclay. This was none other than she whom the reader has previously known as Crazy Jane, but she deserved the epithet no longer. Under a judicious system of treatment in the house of an eminent psychological physician, she had completely regained her intellect, and the poor mad wanderer of many years had, through the liberality and kindness of Lord Clandon, become restored to the possession of all her reasoning faculties. She was now decently, indeed handsomely apparelled, and though care and suffering and fatigues during that errant life which she had led had destroyed the beauty with which in her youth she was endowed, yet was her aspect marvellously improved, and no one who had known her as Crazy Jane would have recognized her now as Miss Barclay. She deposed to the fact that only a few days before the terrible scenes took place at Oaklands, in the year 1829, the Duchess Eliza had intimated to her that she fancied she was in a way to become a mother, but that she should not immediately inform the duke thereof, as she could not be altogether certain in so early a stage of pregnancy. In answer to questions that were put to her, Jane Barclay was positively enabled to state that if the duchess were correct in her idea, and if she had really lived to become a mother, the time of her confine- ment must have been about the very date mentioned by our young hero as that of the birthday of himself and his twin sister. Jane Barclay was enabled to swear that the watch marked with the letter E had belonged to the Duchess Eliza, but she did not remember ever to have seen the ring graven with the letter B in the possession of her Grace. As for the wedding-ring, she could not of course pretend to assert that it was her ladyship’s, as there is so much similitude between the generality of such rings. The next witness who appeared before the committee was a respectable-looking elderly woman, who deposed that her name was Mrs. Hutton, and that she had for many years resided in Cumberland near the Scottish border. She per- fectly well recollected that in the autumn of 1829 a gentle- man and a lady arrived at her house, and that the lady made an arrangement for her unoccupied apartments. The lady seemed plunged into the deepest distress; the gentleman had a strange, wild look, and both were young. The gentle- EOMicdooks (E()