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Updated: May 31, 2025
He said that, and saluted me with his grandly gracious bow. As he turned away, he perceived Cristel at the other end of the room, and eagerly joined her. "The only happy moments I have are my moments passed in your presence," he said. "I shall trouble you no more for to-day. Give me a little comfort to take back with me to my solitude.
"Why shouldn't I be Cristel Toller?" she asked. "You were a little girl," I explained, "when I saw you last. You are so altered now and so improved that I should never have guessed you might be the daughter of Giles Toller of the mill, if I had not seen you opening the cottage door." She acknowledged my compliment by a curtsey, which reminded me again of the village school.
I was looking out on the river, and thinking of all that had happened since my first meeting with Cristel by moonlight, when the voice of the deaf man made itself discordantly heard, behind me. "Let me apologize for receiving you here," he said; "and let me trouble you with one more of my confessions. Like other unfortunate deaf people, I suffer from nervous irritability.
She took no notice of him. As he moved again to the door and left us, the hysterical passion in him forced its way outward he burst into tears. The dog sprang up from his refuge under the table, and shook himself joyfully. Cristel breathed again freely, and joined me at my end of the room. Shall I make another acknowledgment of weakness? I communicated this view of the matter to Cristel.
My sense of my own importance was up in arms at the bare suspicion of it! "My dear child," I said grandly, "do you really suppose I am afraid of that poor wretch? Am I to give up the pleasure of seeing you, because a mad fellow is simple enough to think you will marry him? Absurd, Cristel absurd!" The poor girl wrung her hands in despair. "Oh, sir, don't distress me by talking in that way!
I didn't notice that there were other persons present when I asked leave to kiss you. May I hope that you forgive me?" He held out his hand; it was not taken. He waited a little, in the vain hope that she would relent: she turned away from him. A spasm of pain distorted his handsome face. He opened the door that led to his side of the cottage paused and looked back at Cristel.
"You know why." "Cristel! Have I made some dreadful mistake? The truth! I want the truth! Do you love me?" A low cry of misery burst from her. Was she mastered by love, or by despair? She threw herself on my breast. I kissed her. She murmured, "Oh don't tempt me! Don't tempt me!" Again and again, I kissed her. "Ah," I broke out, in the ecstasy of my sense of relief, "I know that you love me, now!"
But, I was naturally desirous of discovering next what Lady Rachel had said; and I asked to speak with Cristel. Her far-seeing father might or might not have perceived a chance of listening to our conversation. He led me to the door of his daughter's room; and stood close by, when I knocked softly, and begged that she would come out.
He shall only tell Cristel that you have come back to England, and you shall arrange to meet her in our grounds when she returns. I am a childless woman, Mr. Roylake and I love her as I should have loved a daughter of my own. Your stepmother and Lady Rachel will acknowledge, even from their point of view, that there is a mistress who is worthy of her position at Trimley Deen."
He was of opinion that my brief absence, while I was taking that fatal "breath of air" on the banks of the river, had offered to Cristel her opportunity of getting away without discovery. "Her old father," the lawyer said, "was no doubt in his bed, and you yourself found nobody watching, in the neighborhood of the cottage." "Employ me in some way!" I burst out.
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