When seated, she
continued her invectives. She called Miss Beaufort ungenerous,
perfidious, traitor to friendship, and every romantic and disloyal
name which her inflamed fancy could devise; till the sight of Harley
Street checked her transports, and relieved her patient hearer from a
load of impertinence and reproach.
During this short interview, Thaddeus had received an impulse to his
affections which hurried them forward with a force that neither time
nor succeeding sorrows could stop nor stem.
Mary's heavenly-beaming eyes seemed to have encircled his head with
love's purest halo. The command, "Preserve yourself for others
besides your dying friend," yet throbbed at his heart; and with ten
thousand rapturous visions flitting before his sight, he trod in air,
until the humble door of his melancholy home presenting itself, at
once wrecked the illusion, and offered sad reality in the person of
his emaciated friend.
On the count's entrance to the sick chamber, Doctor Cavendish gave
him a few directions to pursue when the general should awake from the
sleep into which he had been sunk for so many hours. With a heart the
more depressed from its late unusual exaltation, Thaddeus sat down at
the side of the invalid's bed for the remainder of the day.
At five in the afternoon, General Butzou awoke. Seeing the count, he
stretched out his withered hand, and as the doctor predicted,
accosted him rationally.
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