The Dutch might be burning more ships, and the noise of
war might be coming nearer London with every hour of the summer day. Here
there was a repose as of the after-life, when all hopes and dreams and
loves and hates are done and ended, and the soul waits in darkness and
silence for the next unfolding of its wings.
Those hateful words, "your adoring slave," and all that speech of
Hyacinth's which the child had repeated, haunted Angela with an agonising
iteration. She had not an instant's doubt as to the scene being faithfully
reported. She knew how preternaturally acute Henriette's intellect had
become in the rarified atmosphere of her mother's drawing-room, how
accurate her memory, how sharp her ears, and how observant her eyes.
Whatever Henriette reported was likely to be to the very letter and spirit
of the scene she had witnessed. And Hyacinth, her sister, had put this
shame upon her, had spoken of her in the cruelest phrase as loving one whom
it was mortal sin to love. Hyacinth, so light, so airy a creature, whom her
younger sister had ever considered as a grown-up child, had yet been shrewd
enough to fathom her mystery, and to discover that secret attachment which
had made Denzil's suit hateful to her.
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