I wished, and wish, to
remain ignorant of it. I, for one, have ever considered it the wise
dispensation of a merciful Providence.'
Cadurcis ground his teeth; a dark look came over him which, when
once it rose on his brow, was with difficulty dispelled; and for the
remainder of the dinner he continued silent and gloomy.
He was, however, not unobserved by Venetia. She had watched his
evident attempts to conciliate her mother with lively interest; she
had witnessed their failure with sincere sorrow. In spite of that
stormy interview, the results of which, in his hasty departure, and
the severance of their acquaintance, she had often regretted, she had
always retained for him the greatest affection. During these three
years he had still, in her inmost heart, remained her own Plantagenet,
her adopted brother, whom she loved, and in whose welfare her feelings
were deeply involved. The mysterious circumstances of her birth, and
the discoveries to which they had led, had filled her mind with a
fanciful picture of human nature, over which she had long brooded. A
great poet had become her ideal of a man. Sometimes she had sighed,
when musing over her father and Plantagenet on the solitary seashore
at Weymouth, that Cadurcis, instead of being the merely amiable, and
somewhat narrow-minded being that she supposed, had not been invested
with those brilliant and commanding qualities which she felt could
alone master her esteem.
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