The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 483, April 2, 1831 by Various
page 20 of 50 (40%)
page 20 of 50 (40%)
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"'Married!' and as that word left my lips, it seemed as if my very life, my very soul, had gushed forth also in the sound. When--oh! when, in the night-watch and the daily yearning, when, whatever might have been my grief or wretchedness, or despondency, when had I dreamt, when imaged forth even the outline of a doom like this? Married! my Lucy, my fond, my constant, my pure-hearted, and tender Lucy! Suddenly, all the chilled and revolted energies of my passions seemed to re-act, and rush back upon me. I seized that smiling and hollow wretch with a fierce grasp. 'You have done this--you have broken her heart--you have crushed mine! I curse you in her name and my own!--I curse you from the bottom and with all the venom of my soul!--Wretch! wretch! and he was as a reed in my hands.' "'Madman,' said he, as at last he extricated himself from my gripe, 'my daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to make her happy than you. Go, go--I forgive you--I also was once in love, and with _her_ mother!' "I did not answer--I let him depart. "It was a little while after this interview--but I mention it now, for there is no importance in the quarter from which I heard it--that I learned some few particulars of Lucy's marriage. There was, and still is, in the world's gossip, a strange story of a rich, foolish man, awed as well as gulled by a sharper, and of a girl torn to a church with a violence so evident that the priest refused the ceremony. But the rite was afterwards solemnized by special license, in private, and at night. The pith of that story has truth, and Lucy was at once the heroine and victim of the romance. Now, then, I turn to somewhat a different strain |
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