Tales from Blackwood Volume 3 (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...the good intentions of his friends; but requested of Seldon that the subject, which he dismissed from his own mind as perfectly unworthy of a second thought, should not be revived in their discussions; and Seldon, conscientiously satisfied with having done as much as discretion warranted in the discharge of his delicate commission, gladly assented to the proposition. But in such cases it is easier to disbelieve than to forget; and it is among the countless perversenesses of the human mind, to retain most tenaciously, and recur most pertinaciously to, that which the will professes most peremptorily to dismiss. Walter's disbelief was spontaneous and sincere. So was his immediate protest against ever recurring, even in thought, to a subject so contemptible. But, like the little black box that haunted the merchant Abudah, it lodged itself, spite of all opposition, in a corner of his memory, from which not all his efforts could expel it at all times; though the most successful exorcism (the never-failing pro tempore) was a reperusal of those precious letters, in every one of which he found evidence of the lovely writer's Pg 48 ingenuousness and truth, worthy to outweigh, in her lover's heart, a world's witness against her. But from the hour of Seldon's communication, Walter's impatience to be at St Hilaire became so ungovernable, that finding his friend (Mr