It never occurred, however, to her that his present name
was the feigned one. She fancied that he had, in some youthful
escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded. So the
next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her
newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she
evoked. In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention
the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that
she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost
her temper as completely, too, as he. Little she thought, in her
heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening
and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.
But if Elsley had dreaded her knowledge of his story, he dreaded ten
times more Tom's knowledge of it. What if Thurnall should tell Lucia?
What if Lucia should make a confidant of Thurnall? Women told their
doctors everything; and Lucia, he knew too well, had cause to complain
of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense
of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine
with Thurnall against him--for what purpose he knew not: but the
wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately
home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling
in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again!
On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.
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