"
This was the galling present and the dark future which had made so
young and unsentimental a woman as Mary Wells think of suicide for a
moment or two; and it now deprived her of her rest, and next day kept
her thinking and brooding all the time her now leaden limbs were
carrying her through her menial duties.
The afternoon was sunny, and Sir Charles and Lady Bassett took their
usual walk.
Mary Wells went a little way with them, looking very miserable. Lady
Bassett observed, and said, kindly, "Mary, you can give me that shawl;
I will not keep you; go where you like till five o'clock."
Mary never said so much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her
mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps,
and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden.
She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not
move in any direction to get out of it.
While she sat in this somber reverie a gentleman walked up to the door,
and Mary Wells lifted her head and looked at him. Notwithstanding her
misery, her eyes rested on him with some admiration, for he was a model
of a man: six feet high, and built like an athlete. His face was oval,
and his skin dark but glowing; his hair, eyebrows, and long eyelashes
black as jet; his gray eyes large and tender.
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