"Because I had come in, in Mary's stead, with the tray."

"And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with

you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged

on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night

in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go

out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow,

and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again.

Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my

lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves

me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear

I shall find her no more."

A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own

disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for

him in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows,

and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply

something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever.

"Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit,

when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me--passing like a

shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining

afterwards undiscoverable?

"Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?"

"What for, Jane?"

"Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather

alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a

fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie."

"Am I hideous, Jane?"

"Very, sir: you always were, you know."

"Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you

have sojourned."

"Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred

times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never

entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted."

"Who the deuce have you been with?"

"If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your

head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my

substantiality."

"Who have you been with, Jane?"

"You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till

to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of

security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it.

By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass

of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of

fried ham."




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