Hudson as something else. I wish he were my
brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage. Then I could
adore him. I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all
disagreeable rubs and shocks. I am much stronger than he, and I would
stand between him and the world. Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother,
I should be willing to live and die an old maid!"
"Have you ever told him all this?"
"I suppose so; I 've told him five hundred things! If it would please
you, I will tell him again."
"Oh, Heaven forbid!" cried poor Rowland, with a groan.
He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation,
and feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway
was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room. She stopped half-way,
and gave the young persons a flushed and menacing look. It found
apparently little to reassure her, and she moved away with a passionate
toss of her drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister
compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal
flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing;
but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down
to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn.
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