They
loosed the burden of her complicity from Miss Livingstone's shoulders,
these notes which bore so much the atmosphere of Crooked lane, and at
the same time they formed the indictment against her which was, perhaps,
best calculated to weigh upon her conscience. She saw it, holding them
at arm's length, in enormous characters that ever stamped and blotted
out the careful, taught-looking writing, and the invariable "God bless
you, yours truly," at the end. They were all there, aridly complete, the
limitations of the lady to whom she was helping Lindsay to bind himself
without a gleam of possibility of escape or a rift through which tiniest
hope could creep to emerge smiling upon the other side. When she saw
him, in fatalistic reverie, going about ten years hence attached to the
body of this petrifaction, she was almost satisfied to abandon the pair,
to let them take their wretched chance. But this was a climax which did
not occur often; she returned, in most of her waking moments, to
devising schemes by which Laura might be delivered into the hands she
was so likely to encumber. The new French poet, the American novelist of
the year, and a work by Mr. John Morley lay upon Alicia's table many
days together for this reason.
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