The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 228: what you’re looking at

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

THE COMMITTEE OF PRIVILEGES 203 in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, on the occasion of Lettice Rodney’s trial, he fell in with Crazy Jane, whom he discov- ered to be Jane Barclay, the principal lady’s-maid of the Duchess Eliza in years gone by; he provided a comfortable home for that unfortunate creature, but in the unsettled state of her intellect she abandoned it. At about the same time that the intelligence of her disap- pearance reached Lord Clandon in London, he received a communication from the trusty agent whom he had left pur- suing inquiries in the northern counties. This communica- tion was to the effect that the agent had succeeded in dis- covering that after the flight of the Duchess Eliza from Mrs. Hutton’s abode on the border of Cumberland, the unhappy lady had been for some while an inmate of a lunatic asylum in Northumberland. Thither Lord Clandon at once pro- ceeded from London, and he heard all that the proprietor of that asylum could tell him upon the painful subject. Hav- ing some leisure upon his hands, he renewed his own personal inquiries throughout those northern counties, and at the same time he forgot not poor Crazy Jane. Of this latter he received some intelligence, and the result thereof was the visit which he paid to Woodbridge. There, according to his wont in prosecuting his inquiries in any new place relative to the long-lost Duchess Eliza, his first care was to examine the tombstones in the churchyard, in order to ascertain whether amidst those memorials of the dead he should chance to find one that would set at rest the mystery which envel- oped the fate of the duchess, though he then knew not whether she were still an inhabitant of this world or had gone to the next. While inspecting those gravestones at Wood- bridge, he beheld the one with the singularly laconic in- scription. He fell in with Crazy Jane, and circumstances led him into communication with Jonathan Carnabie. From the old sexton’s lips he learned sufficient to clear up all the mystery which had hitherto enveloped the fate of the unfortunate duchess. To his unspeakable wonderment he at the same time learned that the twins Christian and Christina Ashton, whom chance had previously thrown in his way in London, were the offspring of the deceased duchess, and they ignorant of the secret of their birth. On his return to London, he sent for Christian from Ramsgate, and gave hima home. He examined the maternal GomiilGaooks (S©)