Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 2James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 2
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Fiction
It may be asked, whether the earl did never for a moment allow the
remembrance, that his own intrigues might have something to do with
the business, to cross his mind. Perhaps he did--perhaps, indeed, he
could not prevent such thoughts from intruding. But that made him only
the more bitter against Sir Sidney Delaware. Have you never remarked a
nurse, when a child has fallen down and hurt itself, bid it beat the
naughty ground against which it fell? Have you never seen a boy when
he has cut his finger, throw the knife out of the window, or even a
man curse the instrument that he has used clumsily? It is the first
impulse of pampered human nature, to attribute the pangs we suffer to
any thing but our own errors, and to revenge the pain, which we have
inflicted on ourselves, upon the passive instrument. Lord Ashborough
did no more, although, as he rolled on towards the sea-side, he
meditated every sort of evil against Sir Sidney Delaware.
No great information could be obtained upon the coast, although Lord
Ashborough spent the whole day in fruitless enquiries, and although
one of the officers of the coast-guard gave every assistance, with the
keen and active intelligence of a sailor.
The only thing elicited, which seemed to bear at all upon the fate of
Henry Burrel, was the fact, that one of the sailors, on the look-out
about a week before, had heard, or fancied he heard, a man's voice
calling loudly for help. So convinced had he been himself of the fact,
that, with one of his comrades, he ran down the shore in the direction
of the sounds; but he could discover nothing. It was a fine clear
moonlight night, he said, so that he must have seen any thing, if
there had been any thing to see; but the sound only continued a
moment, and on not finding any person, he had concluded that it was
all the work of fancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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