"
"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,
smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.
"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"
said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take
their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."
"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.
Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised
and annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently,
and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of her
former animation. Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal
of a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low
voice with undisguised anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."
Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true;
you must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate.
That sort of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."
He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt
to speak, even when he said good-night.
The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within
the clutch of inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint
words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards the vacant
room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and moaned out--
"Oh, I did love him!"
Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too
thoroughly to leave any power of thought.
Pages:
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193