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Charlotte's Inheritance by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
page 71 of 542 (13%)

The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart
almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could
scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of
summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in
London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed
to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to
this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn
where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre.
Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an
incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near
Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire.

The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road
could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart
over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the
young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most
hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were
unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave.

Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth
had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday
came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a
girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no
thought save of remorse for her misdeeds.

The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind.
She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain
regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret
at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her
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