第257章（第2页）

resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed

to protest and to make it a selfish thing.

But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that

there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers

went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day,

sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much

of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended

on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the better

state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher and draw

comfort down.

Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he

had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase

the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such

time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known

nothing of her father’s imprisonment, until he had heard of it from

herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father’s and

uncle’s responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been

read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from

herself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition

fully intelligible nowthat her father had attached to their

betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the

morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake,

never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of

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