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Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald
page 58 of 638 (09%)
The next morning, I was seated by the bedside, with my secret in my
hand, when I thought I heard the sound of the door-handle, and glided
at once into the closet. When I came out in a flutter of anxiety, there
was no one there. But I had been too much startled to return to what I
had grown to feel almost a guilty pleasure.

The next morning after breakfast, I crept into the closet, put my hand
unerringly into the one corner of the box, found no watch, and after an
unavailing search, sat down in the dark on a bundle of rags, with the
sensations of a ruined man. My world was withered up and gone. How the
day passed, I cannot tell. How I got through my meals, I cannot even
imagine. When I look back and attempt to recall the time, I see but a
cloudy waste of misery crossed by the lightning-streaks of a sense of
injury. All that was left me now was a cat-like watching for the chance
of going to my grandmother. Into her ear I would pour the tale of my
wrong. She who had been as a haunting discomfort to me, had grown to be
my one consolation.

My lessons went on as usual. A certain pride enabled me to learn them
tolerably for a day or two; but when that faded, my whole being began
to flag. For some time my existence was a kind of life in death. At
length one evening my uncle said to me, as we finished my lessons far
from satisfactorily--

'Willie, your aunt and I think it better you should go to school. We
shall be very sorry to part with you, but it will be better. You will
then have companions of your own age. You have not enough to amuse you
at home.'

He did not allude by a single word to the affair of the watch. Could my
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