He took the purse, and put it to his lips, and then
pressed it to his heart. ‘No,’ said
he, ’I will never part with it again. I
think I can promise that.’ ‘And now,
dearest, good-bye,’ said she; ’dearest,
dearest Charley, good-bye; perhaps we shall know each
other in heaven. Kiss me, Charley, before you
go,’ So he stooped down over her, and pressed
his lips to hers.
Charley, leaving the room, found Mrs. Woodward at
the other end of the passage, standing at the door
of her own dressing-room. ‘You are to go
to her now,’ he said. ‘Good-bye,’
and without further speech to any of them he hurried
out of the house.
None but Mrs. Woodward had seen him; but she saw that
the tears were streaming down his cheeks as he passed
her, and she expressed no surprise that he had left
the Cottage without going through the formality of
making his adieux.
And then he walked up to town, as Norman once had
done after a parting interview with her whom he had
loved. It might be difficult to say which at
the moment suffered the bitterest grief.
MILLBANK
The immediate neighbourhood of Millbank Penitentiary
is not one which we should, for its own sake, choose
for our residence, either on account of its natural
beauty, or the excellence of its habitations.
That it is a salubrious locality must be presumed
from the fact that it has been selected for the site
of the institution in question; but salubrity, though
doubtless a great recommendation, would hardly reconcile
us to the extremely dull, and one might almost say,
ugly aspect which this district bears.
To this district, however, ugly as it is, we must
ask our readers to accompany us, while we pay a short
visit to poor Gertrude. It was certainly a sad
change from her comfortable nursery and elegant drawing-room
near Hyde Park. Gertrude had hitherto never lived
in an ugly house. Surbiton Cottage and Albany
Place were the only two homes that she remembered,
and neither of them was such as to give her much fitting
preparation for the melancholy shelter which she found
at No. 5, Paradise Row, Millbank.
But Gertrude did not think much of this when she changed
her residence. Early one morning, leaning on
Charley’s arm, she had trudged down across the
Park, through Westminster, and on to the close vicinity
of the prison; and here they sought for and obtained
such accommodation as she thought fitting to her present
situation. Charley had begged her to get into
a cab, and when she refused that, had implored her
to indulge in the luxury of an omnibus; but Gertrude’s
mind was now set upon economy; she would come back,
she said, in an omnibus when the day would be hotter,
and she would be alone, but she was very well able
to walk the distance once.
