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Mathilda by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
page 45 of 154 (29%)
quiver and the muscles of his countenance seemed convulsed.

We walked together in the gardens and in the evening when I would have
retired he asked me to stay and read to him; and first said, "When I
was last here your mother read Dante to me; you shall go on where she
left off." And then in a moment he said, "No, that must not be; you
must not read Dante. Do you choose a book." I took up Spencer and read
the descent of Sir Guyon to the halls of Avarice;[28] while he
listened his eyes fixed on me in sad profound silence.

I heard the next morning from the steward that upon his arrival he had
been in a most terrible state of mind: he had passed the first night
in the garden lying on the damp grass; he did not sleep but groaned
perpetually. "Alas!" said the old man[,] who gave me this account with
tears in his eyes, "it wrings my heart to see my lord in this state:
when I heard that he was coming down here with you, my young lady, I
thought we should have the happy days over again that we enjoyed
during the short life of my lady your mother--But that would be too
much happiness for us poor creatures born to tears--and that was why
she was taken from us so soon; [s]he was too beautiful and good for
us[.] It was a happy day as we all thought it when my lord married
her: I knew her when she was a child and many a good turn has she done
for me in my old lady's time--You are like her although there is more
of my lord in you--But has he been thus ever since his return? All my
joy turned to sorrow when I first beheld him with that melancholy
countenance enter these doors as it were the day after my lady's
funeral--He seemed to recover himself a little after he had bidden me
write to you--but still it is a woful thing to see him so
unhappy."[29] These were the feelings of an old, faithful servant:
what must be those of an affectionate daughter. Alas! Even then my
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