F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 67
her hands like one in despair.
"You have ambition. I am too poor to serve your ambition!"
That word, too "poor," is more than her already distracted brain can
bear up under. It brings back the terrible picture of their past
history; it goads and agonizes her very soul. She throws her arms
frantically about his neck; presses him to her bosom; kisses him
with the fervor of a child. Having pledged his forgiveness with a
kiss, and sealed it by calling in a witness too often profaned on
such occasions, George calms her feelings as best he can; then he
smooths with a gentle hand the folds of her uplifted dress, and with
them curtains the satin slippers that so delicately encase her small
feet. This done, he spreads over her the richly-lined India morning-
gown presented to her a few days ago by the Judge, who, as she says,
so wantonly betrayed her, and on whom she sought revenge. Like a
Delian maid, surrounded with Oriental luxury, and reclining on satin
and velvet, she flings her flowing hair over her shoulders, nestles
her weary head in the embroidered cushion, and with the hand of her
only true friend firmly grasped in her own, soothes away into a calm
sleep-that sovereign but too transient balm for sorrowing hearts.
Our scene changes. The ghost hath taken himself to the grave-yard;
the morning dawns soft and sunny on what we harmlessly style the
sunny city of the sunny South. Madame Flamingo hath resolved to nail
another horse-shoe over her door. She will propitiate (so she hath
it) the god of ghosts.
George Mullholland, having neither visible means of gaining a
livelihood nor a settled home, may be seen in a solitary box at
Baker's, (a coffee-house at the corner of Meeting and Market
streets,) eating an humble breakfast. About him there is a
forlornness that the quick eye never fails to discover in the
manners of the homeless man. "Cleverly done," he says, laying down
the Mercury newspaper, in which it is set forth that "the St.
Cecilia, in consequence of an affliction in the family of one of its