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But can any one believe our Saviour here means those empty, hollow-hearted visits now so common among us? just going, I mean, to a sick neighbor's door, and asking how she does or peradventure stepping in, only to stare at the sufferer, and with a half suppressed breath and a sigh, to hope to comfort her by wishing she may ultimately recover? No such thing.
I lose my appetite at the sight of successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb, is so disgustful in my nostril that my stomach turns.
Now, when a young lady is in such a state of affliction, the first thing to be done is to sit down and cry for two hours or more, which Mary accomplished in the most thorough manner; in the mean while making many reflections on the instability of human friendships, and resolving never to trust any one again as long as she lived, and thinking that this was a cold and hollow-hearted world, together with many other things she had read in books, but never realized so forcibly as at present.
Now Janet was not one whit afraid of double dealing when she was present, and being proud of Mistress Penwick and not wishing it to appear that she was a prisoner, she opened the door and in came Lady Constance smiling and shy, a hollow-hearted creature of the world.
Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character, I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegritive depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony.
It has almost been considered as culpable to evince toward him the least sympathy or support; and many a hollow-hearted caitiff have I seen, who basked in the sunshine of his bounty while in power, who now skulked from his side, and even mingled among the most clamorous of his enemies . . . . I bid him farewell with a heavy heart, and he expressed with peculiar warmth and feeling his sense of the interest I had taken in his fate.
The hollow-hearted Eustachio and the rapacious Leonardo, their virtual rulers, might indeed be little sensible to this enthusiasm, but they could not disregard the general drift of public opinion, which said clearly: "Mantua is trying a great experiment. Woe to you if you bring it to nought by your selfish quarrels!"
Had I struck an invaluable clue? Had I, through the weakness and doting fondness of this poor woman, come upon the one link which would yet lead us to identify this hollow-hearted, false and most vindictive man of great affairs with the wandering and worthless husband of the nondescript Bess, whose hand I had touched and whose errand I had done, little realizing its purport or the influence it would have upon our lives?
It seems, too, as if the tree made especial preparation for the housing of other less shy folk. I know no other tree so nobly hollow-hearted. At little excuse, if it be not good will toward woodpeckers, bluebirds and their like, the mahogany-like dense heart-wood rots, leaving hollow passages in the trunk and larger limbs, and often in the smaller ones, too.
"God bless her!" cried John, heartily. There was a rustle under the boughs of the old hollow-hearted pollard-tree. "Ha, ha! Hark! I said that so loud that I have startled the ravens!" "How he did love her!" said Mrs. Avenel, thoughtfully. "I am sure he did; and no wonder, for she looks every inch a lady; and why should not she be my lady, after all?" "He? Who?
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