Bigamy -- Fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
Sir Patrick came in to tea, with the gentlemen, still uncertain as to
the right course to take in the matter of the telegram. One look at
Blanche’s sad face and Blanche’s altered manner decided him. What would
be the result if he roused new hopes by resuming the effort to trace
Miss Silvester, and if he lost the trace a second time? He had only to
look at his niece and to see. Could any consideration justify him in
turning her mind back on the memory of the friend who had left her at
the moment when it was just beginning to look forward for relief to the
prospect of her marriage? Nothing could justify him; and nothing should
induce him to do it.
Reasoning--soundly enough, from his own point of view--on that basis,
Sir Patrick determined on sending no further instructions to his friend
at Edinburgh. That night he warned Duncan to preserve the strictest
silence as to the arrival of the telegram. He burned it, in case of
accidents, with his own hand, in his own room.
Rising the next day and looking out of his window, Sir Patrick saw
the two young people taking their morning walk at a moment when
they happened to cross the open grassy space which separated the two
shrubberies at Windygates. Arnold’s arm was round Blanche’s waist, and
they were talking confidentially with their heads close together.
“She is coming round already!” thought the old gentleman, as the two
disappeared again in the second shrubbery from view. “Thank Heaven!
things are running smoothly at last!”
Among the ornaments of Sir Patrick’s bed room there was a view (taken
from above) of one of the Highland waterfalls. If he had looked at the
picture when he turned away from his window, he might have remarked that
a river which is running with its utmost smoothness at one moment may be
a river which plunges into its most violent agitation at another; and he
might have remembered, with certain misgivings, that the progress of a
stream of water has been long since likened, with the universal consent
of humanity, to the progress of the stream of life.
FIFTH SCENE.--GLASGOW.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
ANNE AMONG THE LAWYERS.
ON the day when Sir Patrick received the second of the two telegrams
sent to him from Edinburgh, four respectable inhabitants of the City of
Glasgow were startled by the appearance of an object of interest on the
monotonous horizon of their daily lives.
The persons receiving this wholesome shock were--Mr. and Mrs. Karnegie
of the Sheep’s Head Hotel--and Mr. Camp, and Mr. Crum, attached as
“Writers” to the honorable profession of the Law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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