She would look at it just once
more, and see if some very dense and stupid policeman could have
mistaken the name, or if Mary would certainly have been dragged into
notice in the affair.
No! no one could have mistaken the "ry Barton," and it WAS Jem's
handwriting!
Oh! if it was so, she understood it all, and she had been the cause!
With her violent and unregulated nature, rendered morbid by the
course of life she led, and her consciousness of her degradation,
she cursed herself for the interference which she believed had led
to this; for the information and the warning she had given to Jem,
which had roused him to this murderous action. How could she, the
abandoned and polluted outcast, ever have dared to hope for a
blessing, even on her efforts to do good. The black curse of Heaven
rested on all her doings, were they for good or for evil.
Poor, diseased mind! and there were none to minister to thee!
So she wandered about, too restless to take her usual heavy
morning's sleep, up and down the streets, greedily listening to
every word of the passers-by, and loitering near each group of
talkers, anxious to scrape together every morsel of information, or
conjecture, or suspicion, though without possessing any definite
purpose in all this.
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