The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

THE FREEMASON’S DAUGHTER. 147 tested by absence—broken a love as true? No—no,” he mentally added, in a tone of self-reproach, as Amy, in all her truthfulness and youthful candour, presented herself mentally before him; ‘‘that there are such women, experience proves—’tis the oft-told history of ° the old love and the new; but Amy—my own true- hearted Amy—will never prove such anone! I deserve to lose her for the ungenerous doubt.” Many who knew him, as he hurried soliloquising along the streets, thought that the speaker was mad; others, less charitable, only supposed that he was drunk. And so he was, poor fellow—drunk with that agony of the heart, which, unlike the intoxication of the wine- cup, goads, instead of deadening its sensibilities. Just as he turned the corner of Morley Street, he jostled against a gentleman coming in an opposite direction, and was, in the pre-occupation of his mind, proceeding without a word of excuse or apology, when the voice of the party arrested him. “Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Beacham ?” Henry looked up, and recognised in the speaker an old schoolfellow and friend, named William Bowles, the son of a wealthy manufacturer at Burnley. He was a young man about his own age: a tall, fine- hearted, frank, manly fellow, sincerely attached to Henry Beacham, but secretly much hurt at the estrange- ment which had taken place between them, an estrange- ment which he attributed to his old companion’s intimacy with Lord Somers, whom he despised ; for he L 2 COUN Goo! SS (SO