Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century; Watercolor painting, British
Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one
course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each
successive consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose passed a
sleepless and anxious night. After more communing with herself next
day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.
‘If it be painful to him,’ she thought, ‘to come back here, how
painful it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may
write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting
me--he did when he went away. I hardly thought he would; but it was
better for us both.’ And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned away,
as though the very paper which was to be her messenger should not
see her weep.
She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times,
and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter
without writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking
in the streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered the room
in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken
some new cause of alarm.
‘What makes you look so flurried?’ asked Rose, advancing to meet
him.
‘I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,’ replied the
boy. ‘Oh dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you
should be able to know that I have told you the truth!’
‘I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,’ said Rose,
soothing him. ‘But what is this?--of whom do you speak?’
‘I have seen the gentleman,’ replied Oliver, scarcely able to
articulate, ‘the gentleman who was so good to me--Mr. Brownlow, that
we have so often talked about.’
‘Where?’ asked Rose.
‘Getting out of a coach,’ replied Oliver, shedding tears of delight,
‘and going into a house. I didn’t speak to him--I couldn’t speak to
him, for he didn’t see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to
go up to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and
they said he did. Look here,’ said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper,
‘here it is; here’s where he lives--I’m going there directly! Oh,
dear me, dear me! What shall I do when I come to see him and hear
him speak again!’
With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many
other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which
was Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined upon
turning the discovery to account.
‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready
to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a minute’s
loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an
hour, and be ready as soon as you are.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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