They had arranged to drive as far as the bridge, where they would quit the carriage and walk along the wharves to view the Aurora and give the sulphur to Mr Eagle. But there were several places to be visited first of all: Mrs Bigg was to be enquired after; a little basket of comforts in the shape of tea, sugar, and the like was to be left at Mrs Lavender's, whose husband had fallen into a disused pit, and after lying in it all night, during which it rained heavily and continuously, he was discovered by a boy, and later on hauled up with both his legs broken. Several such errands of kindness and compassion must render the drive to the bridge circuitous.,
"Miss Acton—Lucy—my Lucy: for my Lucy you have ever been in my heart since the day when I asked you to be my wife, and you know—but you must believe—that my adoration of you then has not waned by a single ray of its brilliance—nay, the flame is greater and purer and more glowing than it was in that hour in which you refused my hand, not because you could not love me, nor because you believed the half of what had been told you about me, but because I was in too great a hurry. I had not given you time to find me out and love me as I believe, as I am sure you now do. Oh, my Lucy, this act of seeming treason against you will be forgiven. Your heart will acknowledge[Pg 250] that violent as might seem the step I have taken, by no other could we have been brought together, and all the artifices and all the falsehoods I have been guilty of were, you will come to believe, the inspiration of such a love as few men ever felt for the women of their worship.",
What could the unfortunate, infatuated, handsome rascal say? Her appeal was poignant by virtue of her deep distress, the misery of her condition, the insane disposition of her beautiful face, wild and almost white in its shadowing of hair. What could he say to her? His countenance was filled with the confusion of his mind. His heart beat tumultuously with love that raged with its sense of helplessness. These phrases do not exaggerate a state that nothing but the highest form of genius could delineate in its astounding complexity of adoration, despair, horror at the consequences of his own lightly undertaken act, honour that could be no stranger to a valiant nature, and a resolution to persevere and conquer as a consequence of the character that could lay upon its owner's soul this enormous obligation of the betrayal of the girl he worshipped and the man who had stood his friend when the world was sterile, and he must either flee the country or rot in gaol..
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