"
"I am glad your lordship grants me so much," said John Christie,
resuming the tone of embittered irony with which he had opened the,
singular conversation; "I will spare you farther reproach and
remonstrance--your mind is made up, and so is mine.--So, ho, warder!"
The warder entered, and John went on,--"I want to get out, brother.
Look well to your charge--it were better that half the wild beasts in
their dens yonder were turned loose upon Tower Hill, than that this
same smooth-faced, civil-spoken gentleman, were again returned to
honest men's company!"
So saying, he hastily left the apartment; and Nigel had full leisure
to lament the waywardness of his fate, which seemed never to tire of
persecuting him for crimes of which he was innocent, and investing him
with the appearances of guilt which his mind abhorred. He could not,
however, help acknowledging to himself, that all the pain which he
might sustain from the present accusation of John Christie, was so far
deserved, from his having suffered himself, out of vanity, or rather
an unwillingness to encounter ridicule, to be supposed capable of a
base inhospitable crime, merely because fools called it an affair of
gallantry; and it was no balsam to the wound, when he recollected what
Richie had told him of his having been ridiculed behind his back by
the gallants of the ordinary, for affecting the reputation of an
intrigue which he had not in reality spirit enough to have carried on.
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