To these I would never have lent
myself in any way--ill as you think of me. And as long as we continue
together I will guard your good name as I would do that of my own dear
daughter--that is, if I had one. You shall receive no visitor alone."
She spoke with a feeling and dignity of which I had scarcely believed
her capable, shrewd and sensible as I knew her to be, and far above the
woman she called her mistress, in a certain _retenu_ of manner and
delicacy of deportment, usually inseparable from good-breeding.
I could not then guess how acceptable, to her and the person she was
chiefly interested in, were these signs of my aversion for Basil
Bainrothe, and what sure means they were of access to the only tender
spot in the obdurate heart of Rachel Clayton.
Certain it is that, from these expressions, I derived the first
consolation that had come to me in my immurement, and from that hour the
solemn farce of keeper and lunatic ceased to be played between us two.
From such freedom of communication on my jailer's part, I began to hope
for additional information, which never came. It was in vain that I
conjured her to tell me where my prison was situated, whether at the
edge of the city, or far away in the country, or to suffer me to have a
glimpse from a window of my vicinity. To all such entreaties she was
pitiless, and I was left to that vague and vain conjecture which so
wears the intellect.
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