Miss Pollingray concluded by asking me what I thought of the story. I
said: 'It is very strange French habits are so different from ours. I
dare say . . . I hope . . . , perhaps . . . indeed, Mr. Pollingray seems
happy now.' Her idea of my wits must be that they are of the schoolgirl
order--a perfect receptacle for indefinite impressions.
'Ah!' said she. 'Gilbert has burnt his heart to ashes by this time.'
I slept with that sentence in my brain. In the morning, I rose and
dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to
breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to
think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish,
his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I
still see him, like a martyr.
'Some people,' Miss Pollingray said, I permitted themselves to think evil
of my brother's assiduous devotion to a married woman. There is not a
spot on his character, or on that of the person whom Gilbert loved.'
I would believe it in the teeth of calumny.
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