Pelham — Volume 07 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 26 of 78 (33%)
page 26 of 78 (33%)
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her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and called
upon her in a voice which could once have allayed her wildest emotions; and had the agony of seeing her eye dwell upon me with the most estranged indifference and the most vehement and fearful aversion. But ever and anon, she uttered words which chilled the very marrow of my bones; words which I would not, dared not believe, had any meaning or method in their madness--but which entered into my own brain, and preyed there like the devouring of a fire. There was a truth in those ravings--a reason in that incoherence--and my cup was not yet full. "At last, one physician, who appeared to me to have more knowledge than the rest of the mysterious workings of her dreadful disease, advised me to take her to the scenes of her first childhood: 'Those scenes,' said he, justly, 'are in all stages of life, the most fondly remembered; and I have noted, that in many cases of insanity, places are easier recalled than persons: perhaps, if we can once awaken one link in the chain, it will communicate to the rest.' "I took this advice, and set off to Norfolk. Her early home was not many miles distant from the churchyard where you once met me, and in that churchyard her mother was buried. She had died before Gertrude's flight; the father's death had followed it: perhaps my sufferings were a just retribution. The house had gone into other hands, and I had no difficulty in engaging it. Thank Heaven, I was spared the pain of seeing any of Gertrude's relations. "It was night when we moved to the house. I had placed within the room where she used to sleep, all the furniture and books, with which it appeared, from my inquiries, to have been formerly filled. We laid her in the bed that had held that faded and altered form, in its freshest and |
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