Agnes Stanhope; A Tale of English Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1862 Excerpt: ... and bloom, should bring back a more distinct likeness to what she had been in that terrible period of her life. Bertha she saw only at a distance, but even then the absence of color, and the heavy eyes, showed her that her secret was torturing another breast, and she shrank, purposely, from the pain of the interview which her sister plainly sought, dreading the alternative which she foresaw would be pressed upon her, either of a disclosure to her husband from her own lips, or a revelation at last to his ear from these anxious friends. Twice or thrice Judge Rathburn passed her in the street, the same courtly bow, but no longer the gleam of puzzled inquiry in his cold eye as it met hers; either his doubts were laid at rest, which of course could not be, or he had dismissed the question where they had met as of little moment. Leslie's calls were as persevering as ever, but from the cause to which I have before alluded he now seldom found her in, or on such occasions always surrounded by a throng of visitors. De Lacy had begun to discover the change in her outward appearance, absorbed as he was in his present matters of interest, and guarded as her spirits uniformally were in his presence, and she saw with no little uneasiness that his quick eye had traced it to some mental origin, to some cause very different from the smoky atmosphere and languid spring days of London. She saw also that he forebore to question, trying still to deceive himself with the belief that it had its growth in those acute sensibilities which would linger too painfully around the past, here in the theatre of its events, but she felt that the fabric of her happiness had never before seemed tottering on so frail a foundation. The portrait was concluded at last; three weeks had dragged away...