Then, glancing
at Clarence, something possessed him to say, 'You have not been
buying any.'
'No, sir,' Clarence answered; but a few minutes later, when we were
alone together, the others having left him to help me upstairs, he
exclaimed, 'Edward, what is to be done? I didn't buy it; but there
is one of those papers in my great-coat pocket. Pollard threw it on
my desk; and there was something in it that I thought would amuse
you.'
'Oh! why didn't you say so?'
'There I am again! I simply could not, with his eye on me!
Miserable being that I am! Oh, where is the spirit of ghostly
strength?'
'Helping you now to take it to papa in the study and explain!' I
cried; but the struggle in that tall fellow was as if he had been
seven years old instead of seventeen, ere he put his hand over his
face and gave me his arm to come out into the hall, fetch the paper,
and make his confession. Alas! we were too late. The coat had been
moved, the paper had fallen out; and there stood my mother with it
in her hand, looking at Clarence with an awful stony face of mute
grief and reproach, while he stammered forth what he had said
before, and that he was about to give it to my father. She turned
away, bitterly, contemptuously indignant and incredulous; and my
corroborations only served to give both her and my father a certain
dread of Clarence's influence over me, as though I had been either
deceived or induced to back him in deceiving them.
Pages:
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60