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RIGHT OR WEONG. 395
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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_ -«» *• ( Concluded From Page 339.)
Full well I remembered those words on wliicli I liad hung" entranced , yearning- to prove how entirelI trusted him .
y ' *¦ * And now , ' he continued passionately , * what has this day shown me ? Why not have confided all your distress , your
unnecessary alarm to me ; why refuse to see me , even for a moment ; why not , when Alice slept , have sought comfort and encouragement at my
side ? _TVhy , even at this moment , sit there aloof so coldly , instead of saying * , one -word to soothe , to reassure me ; why set so lightly by
the heart which has so long , long * been yours ? * compelled " Oh ! poor to alienate forlorn him wretch from that me I ; was and , to without be so vindicating loved and yet 1 myself feel
from his reproaches , leave him to the pain and mortification of believing- them well-founded !
" In that dire extremity I chose the path most fraught with pain and anguish to myself , and therefore deemed it best ; telling Mm
how , I need not dwell upon— -that he had only anticipated what I had come prepared to say . That convinced I could not reconcile
my duty towards my husband and ray sister , in the solemn light in which I had been brought up to regard her , I had decided tliat for
his happiness , for hers , as well as my own peace of mind , it was better our engagement should cease , and that henceforth I should
only look upon him as a brother . " Long , earnestly , reproachfully , did he speak in his turn . The
night wore on ere he ceased from his endeavors to shake my resolution , or at least obtain a promise that I would take time before
announcing it to my friends . But I distrusted my own strength , I could not pause . My mother's face seemed looking down upon
me as when I knelt before her and vowed the happiness of Alice should be dearer to me than my own : those frenzied words were
still ringing in my ears , beneath whose violence I had that day quailed , the utterance of which convulsed with shame those beauteous
lips no earthly passion had yet stirred . " Knowing what I knew , my sister could not remain beneath our
roof had I become his wife : with the vow I had vowed I could not send her lonely and wretched from me . Beyond this I did not
reason , unless reasoning that could be called , which for him—beyond this present misery—already saw light dawning .
" 1 was strangely passive all this time , spell-bound by the fear of betraying- Aliceand making no attempt to deprecate his anger ;
while an intense , throbbing in my temples seemed at length to deaden my perception of the mental anguish I was alike inflicting and
enduring tc Then " . it was that , stung by my apparent insensibility , he said it
was well he had not staked the remaining happiness of his life on capable a person of whose uniting narrow 1 the duties ideas , of and an fri elder gid sister nature with , rendered the discharge her
inof still higher obligations , and , solely mindful of one promise , slighted " the claims of an affection so tried and devoted as his own *
yojl . in . 2 r 2
Right Or Weong. 395
RIGHT OR WEONG . 395
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1859, page 395, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081859/page/35/
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