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Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873

"Uncle Silas A Tale of Bartram-Haugh"




CHAPTER LX
_THE JOURNEY_

Waiting for the train, as we stood upon the platform, I looked back again
toward the wooded uplands of Bartram; and far behind, the fine range of
mountains, azure and soft in the distance, beyond which lay beloved old
Knowl, and my lost father and mother, and the scenes of my childhood, never
embittered except by the sibyl who sat beside me.
Under happier circumstances I should have been, at my then early age, quite
wild with pleasurable excitement on entering London for the first time.
But black Care sat by me, with her pale hand in mine: a voice of fear and
warning, whose words I could not catch, was always in my ear. We drove
through London, amid the glare of lamps, toward the West-end, and for a
little while the sense of novelty and curiosity overcame my despondency,
and I peeped eagerly from the window; while Madame, who was in high
good-humour, spite of the fatigues of our long railway flight, screeched
scraps of topographic information in my ear; for London was a picture-book
in which she was well read.
'That is Euston Square, my dear--Russell Square.


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