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The Marquis of Lossie by George MacDonald
page 26 of 630 (04%)
bosom was like a visit to her grave. But she gathered her strength,
entered with a shudder, passed in growing hope and final safety
through it, and at the other end came out again into the light,
only the cold of its death seemed to cling to her still. But the
day had grown colder; the clouds that, seen or unseen, ever haunt
the winter sun, had at length caught and shrouded him, and through
the gathering vapours he looked ghastly. The wind blew from the
sea. The tide was going down. There was snow in the air. The thin
leafless trees were all bending away from the shore, and the wind
went sighing, hissing, and almost wailing through their bare boughs
and budless twigs. There would be a storm, she thought, ere the
morning, but none of their people were out.

Had there been--well, she had almost ceased to care about
anything, and her own life was so little to her now, that she had
become less able to value that of other people. To this had the
ignis fatuus of a false love brought her! She had dreamed heedlessly,
to awake sorrowfully. But not until she heard he was going to be
married, had she come right awake, and now she could dream no more.
Alas! alas! what claim had she upon him? How could she tell, since
such he was, what poor girl like herself she might not have robbed
of her part in him?

Yet even in the midst of her misery and despair, it was some
consolation to think that Malcolm was her friend.

Not knowing that he had already suffered from the blame of her
fault, or the risk at which he met her, she would have gone. towards
the house to meet him the sooner, had not this been a part of the
grounds where she knew Mr Crathie tolerated no one without express
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