Roxy Hastings — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

ROXY HASTINGS. . 137 the subject spoke ina similar vein, and intimated fears that the unfortunate lady had committed suicide. When Alfred learned, as he did, for somehow these se- crets will leak out, that Lucy had never heard of his es- cape, and that she had been suffered to believe that his dreadful sentence had been put in execution, he began to fear the worst—nay, to make sure of it. He knew her gen- tle, loving heart, and he could imagine how the intensity of her prolonged distress might drive her to madness. After several weeks of this suspense these suspicions re- ceived a terrible confirmation. The body of an unknown female was found in the Hud- son River ina state which defied complete identification, but answering in size and shape, and in many minor par- ticulars, too closely to the lost girl to admit any reasonable doubt of the dreadful truth which had been so long sus- pected. The Holdens, long harrowed by fears, gave a reluctant but decided. acquiescence to the painful theory, and gave solemn and ostentatious sepulture to the deceased, over whose remains a costly monument was reared. If Mark Holden was conscience-stricken he showed no signs of it. Remorse wrung no self-accusation from his steeled heart. There was something of the decency of .grief in his deportment—but that it was unmixed with wrath at the obstinacy of his daughter, or contempt of her folly, who shall say ? With that same dark frown with which he had heard of _ Lucy’s flight—with that same stern compression of the lips, did he now take part in these sad obsequies ; and whatever emotions may have raged within his breast, no eye could have been dryer than that of this imperious man. With Mrs. Holden the case was different. All the mother revealed itself in her when the conviction forced itself upon her mind that her daughter had been driven to madness and self-destruction by parental cruelty, and her moans and self-reproaches were terrible to hear and impos- sible to repress. But upon Alfred’ Lee the blow fell with heaviest force. His grief following so closely upon his recent excitement and privations, proved too much for his exhausted powers, and prostrated him for weeks upona bed of suffering, whence his recovery was for many days doubtful. But na- ture rallied, and he walked forth again a shadow of his former self, wondering often, wondering earnestly, at this, his second escape, from a death which he would gladly Eomicbooks.e