The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

152 THE EVIL GENIUS. maid might have included it among the small articles of lug- gage. Perhaps dear little Kitty might have put it into one of her mother’s trunks. In any case, there it was, abandoned in the drawer of a table at an hotel. ‘*Oh,” he thought, bitterly, ‘‘if I could only feel as coldly toward Catherine as she feels toward me!” Elis resolution had .esisted much; but this final trial of his self-control was more than he could sustain. He dropped into a chair—his pride of manhood recoiled from the contemptible weakness of crying— he tried to remember that she had divorced him and taken his child from him. In vain! in vain! He burst into tears. CHAPTER. XXXVII. MRS. ORMOND. WITH a heart lightened by reconciliation (not the first recon- tiliation, unhappily), with hopes revived, and sweet content re- stored, Sydney’s serenity of mind was not quite unruffled. Her thoughts were not dwelling on the evil life which she had hon- estly deplored, or on the wronged wife to whom she had been eager to make atonement. Where is the woman whose sorrows are not thrown into the shade by the bright renewal of love? The one anxiety that troubled Sydney was caused by remem: brance of the letter which she had sent to the convent at Sandy- seal. As her better mind now viewed it, she had doubly injured Herbert: first in distrusting him, then by appealing from him to the compassion of strangers. If the reply for which she had rashly asked was waiting for her at that moment—if the mercy of the mother superior was ready to comfort and guide her~ what return could she make? how could she excuse herself from accepting what was offered in kindly reply to her own petition? She had placed herseif, for all she knew to the contrary, between two alternatives of in- gratitude equally unendurable, equally degrading. To feel this was to feel the suspense which, to persons of an excitable tem- perament, is of all trials the hardest to bear. The chambermaid was still in the room. Sydney asked if the post-office was near to the hotel. The waman smiled. ‘* Everything is near us, ma’am, in this little place. Can we send to the post-office for you ?” Sydney wrote her initials. ‘*‘ Ask, if you please, for a letter addressed in that way.” She handed the memorandum to tne chambermaid. ‘‘ Corresponding with her lover under her hus- band’s nose!” That was how the chambermaid explained it below-stairs, when the porter remarked that initials looked mys- terious. The mother superior had replied. Sydney trembled as she cpened the letter. It began kindly: ‘‘T believe you, my child, and I am anxious to help you. But I cannot correspond with an unknown person. If you decide te reveal yourself, itis only right to add that I have shown your let- ter to the reverend father, who, in temporal as in spiritual COMICLOOKS. EO m