Love stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Scotland -- Fiction
If some impartial reasoner, like Judy for instance, had been summing
up the matter for him the same would have said: “What are you
troubling yourself about. You are as good as he is, you are a suitable
match for the girl in every way. You have a title, a large estate, a
fine social position personally. You have a more than good record as a
soldier. You are young, handsome, strong, popular. You saved the
girl’s life at the risk of your own. Then why, in the name of common
sense, are you worrying? The old man is not an ass; he will understand
at once that you had a good reason for assuming another name. He will
see that the circumstances of your meeting were such that you had no
time to undeceive him. He owes you already the deepest debt of
gratitude that a father can owe. The girl owes you also her life. What
in the world better chance do you want? You love the girl yourself
…”
Aye! there it was. He loved the girl! That hampered him.
During the whole time of the voyage he kept to himself. He made no new
friends, not even acquaintances; he had begun to feel that so long as
he remained under the shadow of that accursed alias each momentarily
pleasant episode of his life was only the beginning of a new series of
social embarrassments. When the ship arrived at Havre he got off and
went at once to London. There he stayed for a few days in the lodgings
which he had taken in the name of Hardy. He set himself gravely to
work to wipe out from his belongings every trace of the false name. It
was carefully cut or scraped from the new luggage, obliterated from
the new linen and underclothes by the simple process of scissors. The
cards and stationery were burned. It was with a sigh of relief that,
having discharged all his obligations, he drove to his chambers in the
Albany and resumed his own name and his old life. He was, however,
somewhat restless. He tried to satisfy himself with long rides, but
even the speed of the Kentucky horse who got more than his share of
work did not satisfy him. There was some new uneasiness in his life;
an overwhelming want which nothing of the old routine, no matter how
pleasant it might be, could fill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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