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Whether he had meant to drown himself, and lighting on the shallow, had stumbled on till he fell exhausted: or whether he had merely blundered into the stream, careless whither he went, Tom knew not, and never knew; for Elsley himself could not recollect.
He saw that Elsley was vain, and liked his attentions; and that lowered him in his eyes: but he saw too that Elsley shrank from him; at first he thought it pride, but he soon found that it was fear; and that lowered him still more in his eyes. Perhaps Campbell was too hard on the poet: but his own purity itself told against Elsley.
Well, as it is professional duty, I suppose you must: but don't exceed the hour; I shall lie awake till you return, and then you must talk me to sleep." So Tom went out and homeward with Mark and Mary, for their roads lay together; and as he went, he thought good to tell them somewhat of the history of John Briggs, alias Elsley Vavasour. "Poor fool!" said Mark, who listened in silence to the end.
You best know whether you were so likewise." And yet even that, so all-forgiving is woman, might, have been faced by some means: but the miserable complication about the false name still remained. Elsley believed that he was in his wife's power; that she could, if she chose, turn upon him, and proclaim him to the world as a scoundrel and an impostor.
"Delightful indeed!" said Elsley, as he was bound to say: but he said it with an earnestness which made the Major fix his eyes on him. He liked to be always in the seventh heaven; and if other people were anywhere else, he thought them bores. At last, "Now, if you will be good for five minutes," said the Major, "I will show you something really beautiful."
How many strange words of Lucia's that new feeling explained to her; words at which she had once grown angry, as doting weaknesses, unjust and degrading to self-respect. Poor Lucia! She might be able to comfort her now, for she had learnt to sympathise with her by experience the very opposite to hers. Yet there must have been a time when Lucia clung to Elsley as she to Frank.
I believe I shall end by getting hanged or shot in somebody else's place, with this confounded spirit of meddling. Yah! how cold the water is!" For in he went, the grumbling honest dog; stepped across to the black lump; and lifted it up hastily enough, for it was Elsley Vavasour. Drowned? No. But wet through, and senseless from mingled cold and laudanum.
Lucia darted in, and Tom shut the door behind her, and waited at the stair-head. "Better," thought he, "to let the two poor creatures settle their own concerns. It must end soon, in any case." Lucia rushed to the bed-side, drew back the curtains "Tom!" moaned Elsley. "Not Tom! Lucia!" "Lucia? Lucia St. Just!" answered he, in a low abstracted voice, as if trying to recollect.
If Elsley had not had the evil spirit haunting about him, he would have joined in Lucia's admiration of the beautiful creature, as it dropped into the foam from its narrow ledge, with its fan of palmate leaves bright green against the black mosses of the rock, and its golden petals glowing like a tiny sun in the darkness of the chasm: as it was, he answered "Only a buttercup."
Owen disconsolate by their announcement, that a sudden fancy to sleep on the Glyder has seized them. Nothing more will they tell her, or any one; being gentlemen, however much slang they may talk in private. Elsley left the door of Pen-y-gwryd, careless whither he went, if he went only far enough.
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