A Cape jessamine climbing beside it
filled the room with its subtle, intoxicating perfume. It was so
strong, and he felt himself so irresistibly overpowered and
impelled towards a merely idle reverie, that, in order to think
more clearly and shut out some strange and unreasoning enthrallment
of his senses, he rose and sharply closed the window. Then he sat
down and reflected.
What was he doing here? and what was the meaning of all this? He
had come simply to fulfill a duty to his past, and please a
helpless and misunderstood old acquaintance. He had performed that
duty. But he had incidentally learned a certain fact that might be
important to this friend, and clearly his duty was simply to go
back and report it. He would gain nothing more in the way of
corroboration of it by staying now, if further corroboration were
required. Colonel Pendleton had already been uselessly and
absurdly perplexed about the possible discovery of the girl's
parentage, and its effect upon her fortunes and herself. She had
just settled that of her own accord, and, without committing
herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by which
all trouble would be avoided in future. That was the common-sense
way of looking at it.
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