The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

134 THE EVIL GENIUS. She was sheltered; she was pitied; she was encouraged toreturn to her family. The poor deserted creature absolutely refused; she could never forget that she had disgraced them. The good Sister of Charity won her confidence. A retreat which would hide her from the world, and devote her to religion for the rest of her days, was the one end of her wasted life unat she longed for. That end was attained in a priory of Benedictine nuns es- tablished in France. There she found protection and peace— there she passed the remaining years of her life among devoted sister-friends—and there she died a quiet and even a happy death. ‘*You will now understand how my mother’s grateful remem- brance associated her with the interests of more than one com- munity of nuns; and you will not need to be told what she had in mind when she obtained my father’s promise at the time of her last illness. ‘¢ He at once proposed to bequeath the house as a free gift to the Benedictines. My mother thanked him and refused. She was thinking of me. ‘If your son fails to inherit the house from his father,’ she said, ‘it is only right that he should have the value of the house in money. Let it be sold.’ ‘‘So here I am—rich already—with this additional sum of money in my banker’s care. ‘‘My idea is to invest it in the funds, and to let it thrive at in- terest until I grow older, and retire perhaps from service in the navy. The later years of my life may well be devoted to the founding of a charitable institution, which I myself can establish and direct. if I die first—oh, there is a chance of it! We may have a naval war, perhaps, or I may turn out one of these incorrigible madmen who risk their lives in Arctic exploration. In case of the worst, therefore, I shall leave the interests of my contemplated home in your honest and capable hands. For the present good-bye, and a prosperous voyage out- ward bound.” So the letter ended. Sydney dwelt with reluctant attention on the latter half of it. The story of the unhappy favorite of the family had its own melancholy and sinister interest for her. She felt the forebod- ing that it might, in some of its circumstances, be her story too —without the peaceful end. Into what community of merciful women could she be received, in her sorest need? What re- ligious consolations would encourage her penitence? What prayers, what hopes, would reconcile her, on her death-bed, to the common doom? She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck’s letter and put it in her bosom, to be read again. ‘‘If my lot had fallen among good people,” she thought, ‘‘ perhaps I might have be- longed to the Church which took care of that poor girl.” Her mind was still pursuing itsown sad course of inquiry; she was wondering in what part of England Sandyseal might be; she was asking herself if the nuns at the old moated house ever opened their doors to women whose one claim on their common CORNIELOOOKS (C©) m