OUGHT I to have been prepared for the calamity which had now fallen on my
sisters and myself? If I had looked my own experience of my poor father
fairly in the face, would it not have been plain to me that the habits of
a life were not likely to be altered at the end of a life? Surely--if I
had exerted my intelligence--I might have foreseen that the longer his
reformation lasted, the nearer he was to a relapse, and the more
obviously probable it became that he would fail to fulfill the hopeful
expectations which I had cherished of his conduct in the future? I grant
it all. But where are the pattern people who can exert their
intelligence--when their intelligence points to one conclusion, and their
interests to another? Ah, my dear ladies and gentlemen, there is such a
fine strong foundation of stupidity at the bottom of our common
humanity--if we only knew it!
I could feel no hesitation--as soon as I had recovered myself--about what
it was my duty to do. My duty was to leave Dimchurch in time to catch the
fast mail-train from London to the Continent, at eight o'clock that
night.
And leave Lucilla?
Yes! not even Lucilla's interests--dearly as I loved her; alarmed as I
felt about her--were as sacred as the interests which called me to my
father's bedside. I had some hours to spare before it would be necessary
for me to leave her. All I could do was to employ those hours in taking
the strictest precautions I could think of to protect her in my absence.
I could not be long parted from her. One way or the other, the miserable
doubt whether my father would live or die, would, at his age, soon be
over.