"
"Must I? I am afraid you will hate me; for I should hate any one who told
me your faults. Well, then--if I must-- Miss Dodd has a beau."
"It is a lie!" cried Alfred furiously.
"I wish it was. But she has two in fact, both of them clergymen. However,
one seems the favourite; at least they are engaged to be married; it is
Mr. Hurd, the curate of the parish she lives in. By what I hear she is
one of the religious ones; so perhaps that has brought the pair to an
understanding."
At these words a cold sickness rushed all over Alfred, beginning at his
heart. He stood white and stupefied a moment; then, in the anguish of his
heart, broke out into a great and terrible cry; it was like a young lion
wounded with a poisoned shaft.
Then he was silent, and stood stock still, like petrified despair.
Mrs. Archbold was prepared for an outburst: but not of this kind. His
anguish was so unlike a woman's that it staggered her. Her good and bad
angels, to use an expressive though somewhat too poetical phrase, battled
for her. She had an impulse to earn his gratitude for life, to let him
out of the asylum ere Julia should be Mrs.
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