Guardian and ward -- Fiction; Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction
keener vision at moments of Roger’s distress, in a vague dread of the
great unknown into which she was rushing. But she could do no
other,—no other; with this refrain she lulled her doubts. It was
strange how, as the night elapsed and her heart-beats seemed to keep
time to the crashing swing of the train, her pity for Roger
increased. It would have been an immense relief to be able to hate
him. Her undiminished affection, forced back upon her heart, swelled
and rankled there tormentingly. But if she was unable to hate Roger,
she could at least abuse herself. Every circumstance of the last six
years, in this new light, seemed to have taken on a vivid meaning,—a
meaning that made a sort of crime of her own want of foreknowledge.
She kept thinking of expiation, and determined she would write to
Miss Murray, her former schoolmistress, and beg that she might come
and teach little girls their scales. She kept her cousin’s letter
clinched in her hand; but even when she was not thinking of Roger she
was not always thinking of Fenton. She could tell Hubert Lawrence
now that she was as poor and friendless as he had ever wished he
could see her.
Toward morning she fell asleep for weariness. She was roused by a
great tumult and the stopping of the train, which had arrived. She
found with dismay that, as it was but seven o’clock, she had two or
three hours on her hands. George would hardly be at his place of
business before ten, and the interval seemed formidable. The dusk of
a winter’s morning lingered still, and increased her trouble. But
she followed her companions and stood in the street. Half a dozen
hackmen attacked her; a facetious gentleman, lighting a cigar, asked
her if she wouldn’t take a carriage with him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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