On my
return to the regiment I had flown to the cottage, on
the wings of the most impatient and tender love that ever
filled the bosom of man for woman. To my enquiries the
landlady replied, that my cousin had been married two
days previously, by the military chaplain, to a handsome
young officer, who had visited her soon after my departure,
and was constantly with her from that moment; and that
immediately after the ceremony they had left, but she
knew not whither. Wild, desperate, almost bereft of
reason, and with a heart bounding against my bosom, as
if each agonising throb were to be its last, I ran like
a maniac back into the town, nor paused till I found
myself in the presence of your father. My mind was a
volcano, but still I attempted to be calm, even while I
charged him, in the most outrageous terms, with his
villainy. Deny it he could not; but, far from excusing
it, he boldly avowed and justified the step he had taken,
intimating, with a smile full of meaning, there was
nothing in a connection with the family of De Haldimar
to reflect disgrace on the cousin of Sir Reginald Morton;
and that; the highest compliment he could pay his friend
was to attach himself to one whom that friend had declared
to be so near a relative of his own.
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