What of them now? When honest Dan Loftus cited those
lines from the 'Song of Songs,' did he not make her sweet epitaph? Had
she married Captain Devereux, what would her lot have been? She was not
one of those potent and stoical spirits, who can survive the wreck of
their best affections, and retort injury with scorn. In forming that
simple spirit, Nature had forgotten arrogance and wrath. She would never
have fought against the cruelty of changed affections if that or the
treasons of an unprincipled husband had come. His love would have been
her light and life, and when that was turned away, like a northern
flower that has lost its sun, she would have only hung her pretty head,
and died, in her long winter. So viewing now the ways of wisdom from a
distance, I think I can see they were the best, and how that fair, young
mortal, who seemed a sacrifice, was really a conqueror.
Puddock and Devereux on this eventful night, as we remember, having
shaken hands at the door-steps, turned and went up stairs together, very
amicably again, to the captain's drawing-room.
So Devereux, when they returned to his lodgings, had lost much of his
reserve, and once on the theme of his grief, stormed on in gusts, and
lulls, and thunder, and wild upbraidings, and sudden calms; and the
good-natured soul of little Puddock was touched, and though he did not
speak, he often dried his eyes quietly, for grief is conversant not with
self, but with the dead, and whatever is generous moves us.
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