As she spoke, she dragged him across the hall and into the library from
whence he had just issued, and then slammed the door. The bishop reproved
her for this, and wanted her to go to bed, but she refused. "Go to bed,
and lie awake in the dark with horrid words about, how can you expect it?"
she demanded. "I shall not go to bed unless you come and sit beside me all
night long."
Poor Angelica! impetuous, imperious, but in that she was her father's
daughter, not saved by her wonderful intelligence from being fantastical.
There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest
tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element
which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to
perceive at the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making
others ridiculous. But the bishop himself was not conscious of any
absurdity or loss of dignity. It was only the inconvenience that he felt
just then. For he was fresh from a painful interview with Dr. Galbraith,
and every nerve was jarring in response to the horror that had come upon
him. His heart was wrung, and his conscience did not acquit him. He did
recognize now, however, that Angelica was in no fit state of mind to be
left alone, and sitting down beside a little table on which stood his
constant companion and friend for many years, a large quarto copy of the
Bible, he folded his hands upon it, seeming to pray, while he waited
patiently until she should have calmed herself.
Her indignation had driven her to seek a more popular form of relief than
the bishop had chosen. As she paced up and down the room in evident
agitation, every now and then stopping short to wring her hands when
terrible thoughts came crowding, she became in her own mind exceedingly
abusive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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