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He continued to tell himself that he was satisfied if his wife was happy; and it was not till the child's tenth year that he felt a doubt of her happiness. Jane had been a preternaturally good child. During the eight years of her adoption she had caused her foster-parents no anxiety beyond those connected with the usual succession of youthful diseases.
A great opportunity may be lost and an irretrievable error committed by a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of thought. "He who would be Cæsar anywhere," says Kipling, "must know everything everywhere." Nearly everything comes to the man who is always all there. Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious.
Petralto's pale olive face flushed a bright crimson, his eyes flashed and dropped; he whipped the horse into a furious gallop, as if he would escape something; then became preternaturally calm, drew suddenly up, and stood waiting for a handsome equipage which was approaching. Its occupants were bending forward to speak to him.
His hands and feet turned cold, his eyes glowed, and the power to move even a finger had wholly deserted him; only his lips twitched, and his inward eye, looking back on the past with preternaturally sharpened vision, saw, far away and beyond, the last frightful hour.
From the kitchen came occasional clinking of cups and plates; the housekeeper had evidently not swerved from her regular work. With ears preternaturally acute, Eliza hearkened to the silence in the other rooms till some slight sound, she could hardly tell of what, led her upstairs to a certain door.
It might be bad for him to wake and see some one quite near him, looking into his face. At that moment the door opened quietly and the Mother Superior stood on the threshold, looking preternaturally white, even for her. Sister Giovanna rose at once and went to meet her. They exchanged a few words in a scarcely audible whisper.
I awoke with a start, and with wavering eyes looked at the saloon clock. I had slept for one hour only, but it appeared to me that I was quite refreshed. My mind was strangely clear, every sense preternaturally alert. I began to wonder what had aroused me.
Framed by the hood, her face appeared preternaturally pale, her lips were quivering and her eyes, large and dilated, had almost a hunted look in them. Oh! the pity and sadness of it all! For in her small and trembling hands she was clutching with pathetic tenacity a small, brown wallet which contained a fortune worthy of a princess.
Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the twanging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbour wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and realities of life a life which has passed away now and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories.
We don't know how little is heritable, and how much simply training, until we encounter some-such spectacle as that of my poor cousin Milly. When I lay down in my bed and reviewed the day, it seemed like a month of wonders. Uncle Silas was always before me; the voice so silvery for an old man so preternaturally soft; the manners so sweet, so gentle; the aspect, smiling, suffering, spectral.
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