Indeed,
she only wondered that the debate did not end in some of those acts of
violence by which they were usually terminated in the Sanctuary. As
the disputants separated from each other, she, who had no idea that
the cause of the quarrel was more deeply rooted than in the daily
scenes of the same nature which she had heard of or witnessed, did not
hesitate to stop Master Christie in his return to his shop, and
present to him the letter which Lord Glenvarloch had given to her. Had
she been better acquainted with life and its business, she would
certainly have waited for a more temperate moment; and she had reason
to repent of her precipitation, when, without saying a single word, or
taking the trouble to gather more of the information contained in the
letter than was expressed in the subscription, the incensed ship
chandler threw it down on the ground, trampled it in high disdain,
and, without addressing a single word to the bearer, except, indeed,
something much more like a hearty curse than was perfectly consistent
with his own grave appearance, he retired into his shop, and shut the
hatch-door.
It was with the most inexpressible anguish that the desolate,
friendless and unhappy female, thus beheld her sole hope of succour,
countenance, and protection, vanish at once, without being able to
conceive a reason; for, to do her justice, the idea that her friend,
whom she knew by the name of Nigel Grahame, had imposed on her, a
solution which might readily have occurred to many in her situation,
never once entered her mind.
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