But she had heard how in Holland the nurses had
sometimes robbed and abandoned their charges, taking advantage of the
confusions and uncertainties of that period of despair, quick and skilful
to profit by sudden death, and the fears and agonies of relatives and
friends, whose grief made plunder easy. She deemed it likely that one of
those devilish women had first pretended to succour, and had then abandoned
Lord Fareham to his fate, after robbing his house. Indeed, the open doors
of a stately inlaid wardrobe between two windows over against the bed, and
the confused appearance of the clothes and linen on the shelves, indicated
that it had been ransacked by hasty hands; while, doubtless, there had been
many valuables lying loose about a house where there was every indication
of a careless profusion.
"Alas! poor gentleman, to be left by some mercenary wretch--left to die
like the camel in the desert!"
She bent over him, and laid her hand with gentle firmness upon his
death-cold forehead.
"What! are there saints and angels in hell as well as felons and devils?"
he cried, clutching her by the wrist, and looking up at her with distended
eyes, in which the natural colour of the eye-ball was tarnished almost to
blackness with injected blood.
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