Indeed he had congratulated himself on behalf of his worthy old friend Sir William on having resolved to give his son this appointment, for it surely looked as though[Pg 104] with this gift of a berth, with this opportunity for honourably employing himself and so getting a little money and easing his father of the burden of his maintenance, the young fellow's reformation had begun, and naturally Captain Acton, who was an exceedingly kind-hearted man and a sound Christian in principle and behaviour, could not but be happy in the reflection that he might prove instrumental in rescuing a handsome young man, a gentleman, the son of an old friend, himself a Naval officer, a person whose character was enriched by many meritorious and some rare qualities, from the ruin physical and moral into which he was fast decaying through drink and an idleness which was a consequence of an aversion to his old calling, and the almost insuperable difficulty of obtaining anything to do whilst loitering in Old Harbour Town and passing most of his time at "The Swan" with Lieutenant Tupman.
stake. com, If he doubted her insanity at all his suspicion had no stiffer ground than the shallow sand on which reposed his hope[Pg 327] that she was acting. Throughout this passage he did not think to consider her as the child of a great actress. To him she had always been a gentle, sweet, undemonstrative girl, ingenuous in speech, kind, charitable, beloved by the poor, one whose pursuits were amiable and pure. She was nimble and poetical with her pencil. She sang pretty songs prettily. Her beauty informed with a colour of its own the melodies her fingers evoked from the keys or strings of the instruments she touched. He could not think of her as having the talents of an actress, or even the tastes of one. He had never heard of her taking a part in a performance above a charade. Nothing, therefore, but madness or an extraordinary dramatic genius which it was impossible for him to think of her as possessing, could create those parts which she had enacted before him in a manner so immoderately life-like, so absolutely in unison with what he himself could conceive of the behaviour of madness, that deep in his soul might be found the conviction that she had lost her reason, and that his passionate, unprincipled love was the cause of it.
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stake. com Sir William Lawrence halted in the quarterdeck walk the two were taking upon that bright green oval lawn, and looked at the ocean which ran in a white line, pale and faint[Pg 11] as ice at the horizon, betwixt the two points of the ravine crowned on the right by the lighthouse and on the left by a windmill; but the waters of the Channel broadened down from their pearl-like margin into a delicate blue, which changed into dark green and brown as the sea shoaled into the land. The Admiral seemed to find something to delight him in the prospect, and Captain Acton standing at his side viewed a scene, very familiar indeed to him, with pleasure, which increased with the attention he gave it..
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