If it were possible not to believe these people,
I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the
voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong.
"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to
bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was
performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have
such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!--and I had chosen
the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see
my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the
altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept
looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony,
was very bitter to me."
Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste
upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a
poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how
truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve
him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance.
It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been.
He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them
into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a
document of some legal importance.
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