"
"Heartless traitor! monster!" cried Lucy.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes," and her eye flashed and the pen was to her a stiletto.
Bazalgette dictated, "My dear Sir--"
"What? to a cheat?"
"Custom, child. I'll have a stamp made. Besides, if we let them see we
see through them, they would play closer and closer--"
"My dear Sir--In answer to yours of date 11th instant, I regret to
say--that circumstances prevent--my closing--with your obliging--and
friendly offer."
They wrote eight letters; and Lucy's quick fingers folded up
prospectuses, and her rays brightened the room. When the work was
done, she clung round Mr. Bazalgette and caressed him, and seemed
strangely unwilling to part with him at all; in fact, it was twelve
o'clock, and the drawing-room empty, when they parted.
At one o'clock the whole house was dark except one room, and both
windows of that room blazed with light. And it happened there was a
spectator of this phenomenon. A man stood upon the grass and eyed
those lights as if they were the stars of his destiny.
It was David Dodd. Poor David! he had struck a bargain, and was to
command a coasting vessel, and carry wood from the Thames to our
southern ports. An irresistible impulse brought him to look, before he
sailed, on the place that held the angel who had destroyed his
prospects, and whom he loved as much as ever, though he was too proud
to court a second refusal.
"She watches, too," thought David, "but it is not for me, as I for
her.
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