Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

agen. OCTAVIA’S PRIDE these years that have come and gone over you and me, here in England, prosperous, and gay, and honored, and he there in Australia, alone and dreary, a man innocently ban- ished from his country? Can -you think of it, and iui shudder, and cower, and tremble, as I dor”* The noble earl looked intensely annoyed. “Tt is just as I have said!” he exclaimed, inpatiently. ‘You have got your mind upon this morbid notion, and that is all which ails you. Be reasonable, Mary, and look at the thing naturally. Nothing has altered from the con- dition of things as they have been all these years, when you have been calm and happy. No change, except that the man is dead, and the grave covered safely over the secret. Your mind should be easier and lighter.” ‘‘ What! rejoice that our wrong-doing is hidden forever, and forget that he has gone to his grave bearing another’s burden of guilt!—no justification in his life!” How her eyes dilated with their anguish and indignation! ‘““My dear Mary, that old story is entirely forgotten. Who is there to rake up its smothered embers? This Morley, you know, was never actually sentenced—not proved guilty. He lived an honored and useful life there in Sydney. If any knew or heard the ugly rumor, they charitably pardoned it as the wildness of his early youth. I remember that Sir Hugh told me that there was not a man in Sydney, not even the governor, who was more hon- ored and respeeted than this Arthur Morley. He became a famous doctor, you know. Why, perhaps this very injus- tice was the making of his character. He was impetuous and “passinate once, but this steadied him. Besides, Mary, you must remember he was only one of the common class after all. What little he may have suffered, and we are not sure that he really did feel the deprivation, was but a trifle _ to the great trouble which must have come elsewhere. He was a generous fellow. It was wrong in me to call him a s comicbooks.