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"I knew it!" said I, with triumph, conscious that to me was due the glory of unearthing the tale. "I'll tell it to you, if you like," said Mrs. Boyd. "Oh, pray do; we are dying to hear about it!" said Miss Bascombe. "A highwayman above all! How delicious!" "Was he handsome?" asked one of the ladies, foolishly, as if that had anything to say to it. "Wait," said Mrs.
"Ah, but you haven't tried the weight of it, George!" returned Leopold. "God forbid!" said George. "God forbid! indeed," rejoined Leopold; "but there 'tis done for all his forbidding!" "What's done is done, God or devil, and must be borne, I say," said Bascombe, stretching out his legs. He was aware it sounded heartless, but how could he help it? What else was there to be said?
As a mere matter of form, I shall take your own bail in a thousand pounds to surrender when called upon." "But I am not of age, and haven't got a thousand pounds," said Leopold. "Perhaps Mr. Hooker will accept my recognizance in the amount?" said Bascombe. "Certainly," answered Mr. Hooker, and wrote something, which Bascombe signed. "You are very good, George," said Leopold.
Suddenly she found herself close to a clump of trees, which overhung the deserted house. She had made a great circuit without knowing it. A pang shot to her heart, and her tears ceased to flow. The night, silent with thought, held THAT also in its bosom! She drew rein, turned, and waited for Bascombe.
But the red lay burning on the conscience of Helen too, and she had not murdered! And for him who had, he gave society never a thought, but shrieked aloud in his dreams, and moaned and wept when he waked over the memory of the woman who had wronged him, and whom he had, if Bascombe was right, swept out of being like an aphis from a rose-leaf.
That was the sole chink in the prison where these two sat immured alone from their kind unless, indeed, the curate might know of another. One thing Helen had ground for being certain of that the curate would tell them no more than he knew. Even George Bascombe, who did not believe one thing he said, counted him an honest man!
"George, I never could love a man who believed I was going to die for ever." "But, Helen," pleaded Bascombe, "if it can't be helped, you know!" "But you are content it should be so. You believe it willingly. You scoff at any hint of a possible immortality."
"I was just asking Mrs. Boyd what she thought the most singular thing in America," said Miss Bascombe, by way of putting me au courant with the conversation after my greeting was over with our hostess. "And I," replied Mrs. Boyd, "was just going to say I really did not know what was the one most curious thing in America, where most things seem curious, being different from here, you know.
"I have heard nothing; only as I was not allowed to see him, " "I left him with Mr. Bascombe half an hour ago," she said, willing to escape the imputation of having refused him admittance. Wingfold gave an involuntary sigh. "You do not think that gentleman's company desirable for my brother, I presume," she said with a smile so lustreless that it seemed bitter.
Helen," continued Bascombe with solemnity, regarding her fixedly, "to deliver the race from the horrors of such falsehoods, which by no means operate only on the vulgar and brutal, for to how many of the most refined and delicate of human beings are not their lives rendered bitter by the evil suggestions of lying systems I care not what they are called philosophy, religion, society, I care not? to deliver men, I say, from such ghouls of the human brain, were indeed to have lived! and in the consciousness of having spent his life in the slaying of such dragons, a man may well go from the nameless past into the nameless future rejoicing, careless even if his poor length of days be shortened by his labours to leave blessing behind him, and, full of courage even in the moment of final dissolution, cast her mockery back into the face of mocking Life, and die her enemy, and the friend of Death!"
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