The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

THE STRING OF PHARLS. | 93 — _ My, Oakley juaped up, stamped his feet upon the floor and uttering somethinS about the probability of his becoming a maniac in a very short time, rushed into his shop, and set to poushing the spectacles as if he were doing it for a wager. This little affair between her fabher aud mother, certainly had had the effect, for || a fime, of diverting attention from Johanna, and she was able to assume a cheer- fulness she did not feel; but she had something of her father’s spirit im her as regarded Mr, Lupin, and most decidedly objected to sitting down to any meal whatever with that individual, so that Mrs, Oakley was left in a minority of one ee ae occasion, which perhaps, as she fully expected it, was no great matter aiter all. : Johanna went up stairs to her own room, which commanded a view of the street. It was an old-fashioned house, with a balcony in front, and as she looked listlessly out into Fore-street, which was far then from being the thoroughfare it is now, she saw standing in a doorway on the opposite side ef the way astranger, who was looking intently at the house, and who, when he caught her ey e, walked instantly across to if, and east something into the balcony of the first floor. ‘Then he touched his cap, and walked rapidly from the street. | The thought immediately occurred to Johanna that this might possibly be some messenger from him concerning whose existence and welfare she was so deeply anxious. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that with the name of Mark Ingestrie upon her lips she should rush dowa to the balcony in intense anxiety to hear, and see if such was really the case. When she reached the balcony she found lying in it a serap of paper, in which a stone was wrapped up, in order to give it weight, so that it might be cast with a || certainty into the aig With trembling eagerness she opened the paper, and 'read upon it the following words :-— | _“For news of Mark Ingestrie, come to the Temple-gardens one hour before sunset, and do not fear addressing a man who will be holding a white rose in his hand.” _ ©¥Te lives! he lives!” she cried. “ He lives, and joy again becomes the inhabitant | of my bosom! Oh, it is daylight now and sunshine compared to the black mid | night of despair. Mark Ingestrie lives, and I shall be happy yet.” | She placed the little scrap of paper carefully in her bosom, and then, with clasped hands and a delighted expression of countenance, she repeated the brief and ‘| expressive words it contained, adding,— . | ‘Yes, yes, I will be there ; the white rose is an emblem of his purity and affec- tion, his spotless love, and that is why his messenger carries it. I will be there. One hour ay, two hours before sunset, I will be thefe. Joy, joy! he lives, he lives! Mark Ingestrie lives! Perchance, too, successful in his object, he returns to tell me that he can make me his, and that no obstacle can now interfere to frustrate our union. ‘Time, time, float onwards on your fleetest pivions !” | She went to her own apartment, but it was not, as she had last gone to it, to weep; on the contrary, it was to smile at her former fears, and toadmit the philo- sophy of the assertion that we suffer much more from a dread of those things that never happen than we do for actual calamities which occur in their full foree to us. | ‘Oh, that this messenger,” she said, “ had come but yesterday! What hours of anguish I should have been spared! But I will not complain; 1 shall not be said that I repine at present joy because it did not come before. I will be happy when I can ; and, in the consciousness that I shall soon hear blissful tidings of Mark Ingestrie, I will hanish every fear.” ; shies The impatience which she now felt brought its pains and its penalties with if, | and yet it was quite a different description of feeling to any she had formerly en- dured, and certainly far more desirable than the absolute anguish that had taken possession of her upon hearing nothing of Mark Ingestrie. a | t was strange, very strange, thatthe thought never crossed her that the tidings she had to hear in the Temple Gardens from the stranger might be evil ones, but ertainly such a thought did not occur to her, and she looked forward with joy |. . comicbooks.com