Detective and mystery stories, English; Police -- Fiction; Short stories
"Fetch my father here, and mother, you come back with him!" said
Charles, speaking with a strange sternness of tone, and wildly motioning
her out of the room.
When the parents came, he bade them sit down beside him; and then, with
a degree of remorse and anguish that no words could portray, he told
them all; whilst they, with blanched cheeks and fainting hearts,
listened to the dire confession.
"And here I am," he exclaimed, as he ended, "a cowardly scoundrel, that
has not dared to die! O Herbert! happy, happy Herbert! Would I were with
you!"
At that moment the door opened, and a beautiful, bright, smiling,
joyous face peeped in. It was Emily Lovell, the beloved daughter, the
adored sister, arrived from London in compliance with a letter received
a few days previously from Herbert, wherein he had told her that by the
time she received it, he would be a captain. She had come to introduce
him to her parents as her affianced husband. She feared no refusal; well
she knew how rejoiced they would be to see her the wife of so kind and
honorable a man. But they were ignorant of all this, and in the fulness
of their agony, the cup of woe ran over, and she drank of the draught.
They told her all before she had been five minutes in the room. How else
could they account for their tears, their confusion, their bewilderment,
their despair?
Before Herbert's funeral took place, Emily Lovell was lying betwixt life
and death in a brain fever. Under the influence of a feeling easily to
be comprehended, thirsting for a self-imposed torture, that by its very
poignancy should relieve the dead weight of wretchedness that lay upon
his breast, Charles crept from his bed, and slipping on a loose coat
that hung in his room, he stole across the garden to the tower, whence,
through the arrow slit, he witnessed the burial of his sister's lover,
whom he had hastened to the grave.
Here terminates our sad story. We left T---- on the following morning,
and it was two or three years before any farther intelligence of the
Lovell family reached us. All we then heard was, that Charles had gone,
a self-condemned exile, to Australia; and that Emily had insisted on
accompanying him thither.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
to have taken taken entire possession=> to have taken entire possession
{pg 8}
whose sinster aspects=> whose sinister aspects {pg 13}
cooly informed him=> coolly informed him {pg 30}
which his conduet=> which his conduct {pg 45}
which had been abtsracted=> which had been abstracted {pg 110}
both of the clerk Dubarie=> both of the clerk Dubarle {pg 113}
Lavasseur, went down stairs=> Levasseur, went down stairs {pg 136}
Levassuer=> Levasseur {pg 139 x 2}
They were both apparantly=> They were both apparently {pg 145}
by there rude and insolent notice=> by thier rude and insolent notice
{pg 146}
Mr. Augustus Seville=> Mr. Augustus Saville {pg 162}
he mutered=> he muttered {pg 183}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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