The Disowned — Volume 05Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
The Disowned — Volume 05
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
You have done me wrong,--great wrong. I loved you,--I waited on you,
tended you, nursed you, gave all up for you; and you forsook
me,--forsook me without a word. True, that you have been engaged in a
melancholy duty, but, at least, you had time to write a line, to cast
a thought, to one who had shown for you the love that I have done.
But we will pass over all this: I will not reproach you; it is beneath
me. The vicious upbraid: the virtuous forgive! I have for several
days left your house. I should never have come to it, had you not
been wounded, and, as I fondly imagined, for my sake. Return when you
will, I shall no longer be there to persecute and torment you.
Pardon this letter. I have said too much for myself,--a hundred times
too much to you; but I shall not sin again. This intrusion is my
last. CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE.
These letters will probably suffice to clear up that part of
Clarence's history which had not hitherto been touched upon; they will
show that Talbot's will (after several legacies to his old servants,
his nearest connections, and two charitable institutions, which he had
founded, and for some years supported) had bequeathed the bulk of his
property to Clarence. The words in which the bequest was made were
kind, and somewhat remarkable. "To my relation and friend, commonly
known by the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by
blood and affection," etc. These expressions, joined to the magnitude
of the bequest, the apparently unaccountable attachment of the old man
to his heir, and the mystery which wrapped the origin of the latter,
all concurred to give rise to an opinion, easily received, and soon
universally accredited, that Clarence was a natural son of the
deceased; and so strong in England is the aristocratic aversion to an
unknown lineage, that this belief, unflattering as it was, procured
for Linden a much higher consideration, on the score of birth, than he
might otherwise have enjoyed. Furthermore will the above
correspondence testify the general eclat of Madame la Meronville's
attachment, and the construction naturally put upon it. Nor do we see
much left for us to explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman herself,
which cannot equally well be gleaned by any judicious and intelligent
reader, from the epistle last honoured by his perusal. Clarence's
sense of gallantry did, indeed, smite him severely, for his negligence
and ill requital to one who, whatever her faults or follies, had at
least done nothing with which he had a right to reproach her. It
must. however, be considered in his defence that the fatal event which
had so lately occurred, the relapse which Clarence had suffered in
consequence, and the melancholy confusion and bustle in which the last
week or ten days had been passed, were quite sufficient to banish her
from his remembrance. Still she was a woman, and had loved, or seemed
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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