NEXT morning the minister rose to the changed life and world which now
surrounded his way, if not with much less excitement, at least with a
more familiar knowledge of all the troubles which encompassed him. As he
sat over the pretended breakfast, for which he had no appetite, and not
even heart enough to make a show of eating, hearing close by the voice
of his sister's delirium, sometimes in faint murmurs, sometimes rising
into wild outcries of passion, and pondered all the circumstances of
this frightful calamity, it is not wonderful that his heart fainted
within him. He had found out quickly enough that it was an officer of
justice whom Tozer had succeeded, by what means he could not tell, in
removing from his house. His landlady knew all the facts sufficiently
well to be by times reproachful and by times sympathetic. The other
lodgers in the house, some of whom had already left for fear of
pollution, were equally aware of all the circumstances of the case; and
it was impossible to hope that a tale so exciting, known to so many,
could be long of spreading. The minister seemed to himself to look ruin
in the face, as he sat in profound dejection, leaning his head in his
hands. He had committed his sister's interests into the hands of the
best attorney he could hear of in Dover, that watch and search might be
made on the spot for any further information; and now the only thing
possible to be done was to secure some still more skilful agent in
London to superintend the case, and set all the machinery of detection
in motion to discover Mrs. Hilyard. Vincent had nothing in the world but
the income which he drew from the liberality of Salem; an income which
could ill stand the drain of these oft-repeated journeys, not to speak
of the expenses of Susan's defence. All that the minister had would not
be enough to retain a fit defender for her, if she had to undergo the
frightful ordeal of a trial. The very thought of it drove her unhappy
brother desperate. Would it not be better if she died and escaped that
crowning misery, which must kill her anyhow, if she survived to bear it?
But these ponderings were as unprofitable as they were painful. When he
had seen his mother, who whispered to him accounts of Susan's illness,
which his mind was too much preoccupied to understand, he went away
immediately to the railway, and hastened to town. While he stood waiting
in the lawyer's office, he took up listlessly, without knowing what he
was doing, the newspaper of the day. There he found the whole terrible
tale made into a romance of real life, in which his sister's name,
indeed, was withheld, but no other particular spared. As he stood wiping
the heavy dew from his forehead, half frantic with rage and despair, the
quick eye of his misery caught a couple of clerks in another corner of
the office, talking over another newspaper, full of lively interest and
excitement. It was Susan's story that interested them; the compiler had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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