The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

148 THE EVIL GENIUS. of honor. Acting under that influence, he was (if the expres- sion may be permitted) consistent even in inconsistency. With equal sincerity of feeling, he reproached himself for his infidel- ity toward the woman whom he had misled. In Sydney’s pres- ence—sufier as he might under the struggle when he was alone —he found a resolution which sustained him. It kept his inter- course with her studiously gentle in manner and considerate in language; and it offered to her a future which she could only see through the falsifying medium of her own distrust. In the delusion that now possessed her, she read, over and over again, the letter which Captain Bennydeck had addresseci to her father; she saw, more and more clearly, the circumstances which associated her situation with the situation of the poor girl who had closed her wasted life among the nuns in the French convent. Two results followed on this state of things. When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go on leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had heard of, and felt some curiosity to see. The same day— bent on pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad—he wrote to engage rooms at the hotel. A time followed, during which they were obliged to wait unti} rooms were free. In this interval, brooding over the melan- choly absence of friend or relative in whom she could confide, her morbid dread of the future decided her on completing the parallel between herself and that other lost creature of whom she had read. Sydney opened communications anonymously with the Benedictine community at Sandyseal. She addressed the mother superior, telling the truth about herself with but one concealment, the concealment of names. She revealed her isolated position among her fellow-creatures: she declared her fervent desire to repent of her wickedness and to lead a religious life; she acknowledged her misfortune in hav- ing been brought up by persons careless of religion, and she confessed to having attended a Protestant place of worship, as a mere matter of form connected with the duties of a teacher at a school. ‘* The religion of any Christian woman who will help me to be more like herself,” she wrote, ‘‘ is the religion to which fam willing and eager to belong. If I come to you in my dis- tress, will you receive me?” To that simple appeal she added a request that an answer might be addressed to ‘‘S. W., Post- office, Sandyseal.” When Captain Bennydeck and Sydney Westerfield passed each other as strangers in the hall of the hotel, that letter had been posted in London a week since. % * * % % * * The servant showed ‘‘ Mr. and Mrs. Herbert ” into their sitting- room, and begged that they would be so good as to wait a few minutes, while the other rooms were being prepared for them. Sydney seated herself in silence. She was thinking of her letter, and wondering whether a reply was waiting for her at the post-office. Moving toward the window to look at the view, Herbert paused CO NNIELOOOKS (c©) an)