All, however, she was by no means prepared to give him:
that involved consequences far too terrible to be contemplated even
as possibilities.
With such causes for disquiet in her young heart and brain, it is
not then wonderful that she should sometimes be unable to slip across
this troubled region of the night in the boat of her dreams, but
should suffer shipwreck on the waking coast, and have to encounter
the staring and questioning eyes of more than one importunate truth.
Nor is it any wonder either that, to such an inexperienced and so
troubled a heart, the assurance of one absolutely devoted friend
should come with healing and hope--even if that friend should be
but a groom, altogether incapable of understanding her position,
or perceiving the phantoms that crowded about her, threatening to
embody themselves in her ruin. A clumsy, ridiculous fellow, she
said to herself, from whose person she could never dissociate the
smell of fish, who talked a horrible jargon called Scotch, and
who could not be prevented from uttering unpalatable truths at
uncomfortable moments; yet whose thoughts were as chivalrous as
his person was powerful, and whose countenance was pleasing if only
for the triumph of honesty therein: she actually felt stronger and
safer to know he was near, and at her beck and call.
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