If Angela had loved the country, she was not less charmed with London
under its altered aspect. All this gaiety and splendour, this movement and
brightness, astonished and dazzled her.
"I am afraid I am very shallow-minded," she told Denzil when he asked her
opinion of London. "It seems an enchanted place, and I can scarcely believe
it is the same dreadful city I saw a few months ago, when the dead were
lying in the streets. Oh, how clearly it comes back to me--those empty
streets, the smoke of the fires, the wretched ragged creatures begging for
bread! I looked down a narrow court, and saw a corpse lying there, and
a child wailing over it; and a little way farther on a woman flung up a
window, and screamed out, 'Dead, dead! The last of my children is dead! Has
God no relenting mercy?'"
"It is curious," said Hyacinth, "how little the town seems changed after
all those horrors. I miss nobody I know."
"Nay, madam," said Denzil, "there have only died one hundred and sixty
thousand people, mostly of the lower classes; or at least that is the
record of the bills; but I am told the mortality has been twice as much,
for people have had a secret way of dying and burying their dead.
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