Such was her calculation; and, acting upon this impression, she sped on foot towards the dwelling where she had once dwelt a few brief hours as the wife of the man whom she was searching after.
It was nine o’clock in the evening when she turned into the lane where twenty years before Tom Rain had robbed Frank Curtis of the two thousand pounds.
In a few minutes Mrs. Mortimer came in sight of the cottage, the walls of which were glistening white amidst the summer evening semi-obscurity; and her heart beat quickly as she thought of the long—long time that had elapsed since she last saw that spot where she also had been arrested on a capital charge!
What changes—what vicissitudes had marked her existence since that epoch!
She had been in Newgate, and had there given birth to a daughter, who had accompanied her into exile:—the daughter had grown up—had become as profligate, though not altogether as criminal as her mother—and had at length defied the authority of that parent who thus surpassed her in the extent of her iniquity!
Yes—many and striking had been the events that had characterised the old woman’s career since last she saw those white, glistening walls:—but there was the cottage apparently unchanged in outward appearance,—although it was more completely hemmed in by trees than when she quitted it upwards of nineteen years back.
For the large trees which were there in her time, had grown larger, and the saplings had expanded into trees also;—and a high, thick, verdant hedge surrounded the garden.
“Ah!” thought the old woman to herself, as she sped down the lane, “I could almost wish that the cottage was mine, and that I might retire with a competency to this sweet seclusion, no more to commingle in the strife and turmoil of the great—the busy—the jarring world. But this may not be! My life is destined to be stormy until the end. I feel that it is—and I must yield to the destiny that urges me on!”
Melancholy sentiments had risen up in her soul as she gave way to these thoughts; but their current was suddenly cut short—or rather diverted into another channel, when, emerging from the lane, she found herself in front of the cottage.
A light was visible through the shutters of the parlour—that very parlour where Sir Henry Courtenay was murdered, and whither she herself was borne in a fainting fit, after having been arrested in the hall on a charge of forgery.