Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 104 of 305 (34%)
page 104 of 305 (34%)
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for this reason, that it had one good result, and gave me the
quicker sense of Mr. Henry's martyrdom. It was on him the burthen fell. How was he to respond to the public advances of one who never lost a chance of gibing him in private? How was he to smile back on the deceiver and the insulter? He was condemned to seem ungracious. He was condemned to silence. Had he been less proud, had he spoken, who would have credited the truth? The acted calumny had done its work; my lord and Mrs. Henry were the daily witnesses of what went on; they could have sworn in court that the Master was a model of long-suffering good-nature, and Mr. Henry a pattern of jealousy and thanklessness. And ugly enough as these must have appeared in any one, they seemed tenfold uglier in Mr. Henry; for who could forget that the Master lay in peril of his life, and that he had already lost his mistress, his title, and his fortune? "Henry, will you ride with me?" asks the Master one day. And Mr. Henry, who had been goaded by the man all morning, raps out: "I will not." "I sometimes wish you would be kinder, Henry," says the other, wistfully. I give this for a specimen; but such scenes befell continually. Small wonder if Mr. Henry was blamed; small wonder if I fretted myself into something near upon a bilious fever; nay, and at the mere recollection feel a bitterness in my blood. |
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