The giddy
throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt
my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. Let us not pursue
it.
Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable
surprise, they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had anticipated),
but by the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.
"How do you do, Miss Clack?" he said. "I mean to stay this time."
That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him to postpone
his business to mine, when we were both visiting in Montagu Square,
satisfied me that the old worldling had come to Brighton with some
object of his own in view. I had prepared quite a little Paradise for my
beloved Rachel--and here was the Serpent already!
"Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with us,"
said my Aunt Ablewhite. "There was something in the way which kept him
in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a holiday
of it till Monday morning. By-the-by, Mr. Bruff, I'm ordered to take
exercise, and I don't like it. That," added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out
of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man,
"is my idea of exercise.
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