Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
common life and custom struck her strangely, with a humiliating sense of
her own unimportance--she who was so important, the centre of
everything. Jane, her young maid, felt the same sentiment in a totally
different way, being full of pride and exultation in her own
unusualness, and delicious contempt for those unfortunates to whom this
day was just the same as any other.
Jane did not fear the dangers of the deep, which she did not know--while
Miss Susan did, who was aware what she was about to undergo; but she
trusted in Providence to take care of her, and smooth the angry waves,
and said a little prayer of thanksgiving when she felt the evening air
come soft upon her face, though the tree-tops would move about against
the sky more than was desirable. I do not quite know by what rule of
thought it was that Miss Susan felt herself to have a special claim to
the succor of Providence as going upon a most righteous errand. She did
manage to represent her mission to herself in this light, however. She
was going to vindicate the right--to restore to their natural position
people who had been wronged. If these said people were quite indifferent
both to their wrongs and to their rights, that was their own fault, and
in no respect Miss Susan’s, who had her duty to do, whatever came of it.
This she maintained very stoutly to herself, ignoring Farrel-Austin
altogether, who might have thought of her enterprize in a different
light. All through the night which she passed upon the gloomy ocean in a
close little berth, with Jane helpless and wretched, requiring the
attention of the stewardess, Miss Susan felt her spirit supported by the
consciousness of virtue which was almost heroic: How much more
comfortable she would have been at home in the west room, which she
remembered so tenderly; how terrible was the rushing sound of waves in
her ears, waves separated from her by so fragile a bulwark, “only a
plank between her and eternity!” But all this she was undergoing for the
sake of justice and right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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