The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE EVIL GENIUS. 121 Catherine. If there is another long delay, how do we know what may happen before the law has confirmed the mother’s claim to the child? Let me send one of the servants here tc wait at your club. Will you give him a line telling me when the trial is likely to take place ?” ‘‘ With the greatest pleasure. Good-night.”’ Left alone, Randal sat by the fireside for awhile, thinking of the future. The prospect, as he saw it, disheartened him. Asa means of employing his mind on a more agreeable subject for reflection, he opened his traveling-desk and took out two or three letters. They had been addressed to him while he was in America by Captain Bennydeck. The captain had committed an error of which most of us have been guilty in our time. He had been too exclusively devoted to work that interested him to remember what was due to the eare of his health. The doctor’s warnings had been neglected, his overstrained nerves had given way; and the man whose strong constitution had resisted cold and starvation in the arctic wastes, had broken down under stress of brain-work in London. This was the news which the first of the letters contained. The second, written under dictation, alluded briefly to the remedies suggested. In the captain’s case the fresh air recom- mended was the air of the sea. At the same time he was for- hidden to receive either letters or telegrams during his absence from town, until the doctor had seen him again. These instruc- tions pointed, in Captain Bennydeck’s estimation, to sailing for pleasure’s sake, and therefore to hiring a yacht. The third and last letter announced that the yacht had been found, and described the captain’s plans when the vessel was ready for sea. He proposed to sail here and there about the Channel, wherever it might please the wind totakethem. Friends would accompany him, but not in any number. The yacht was no% large enough to accommodate comfortably more than one or two guests at a time. Every now and then the vessel would come to an anchor in the bay of the little coast town of Sandyseal, to accommodate friends going and coming, and (in spite of medical advice) to receive letters. ‘‘ You may have heard of Sandyseal,” the captain wrote, ‘‘as one of the places which has lately been found out by the doctors. They are recommending the air to patients suffering from nervous disorders all over England. The one hotel in the place, and the few cottages which let lodg- ings, are crammed, as I hear; and the speculative builder is be- ginning his operations at such a rate that Sandyseal will be no longer recognizable in a few months more. Before the crescents and terraces and grand hotels turn the town into a fashionable watering-place, I want to take a last look at scenes familiar to me under their old aspect. ‘‘Tf you are inclined to wonder at my feeling such a wish as this, 1 can easily explain myself. Two miles inland from Sandy- seal there is a lonely old moated house. In that house I was born. When you return from America, write to me at the post- office, or at the hotel (I am equally well-known in both places), COMMNICLO© S (EC) im