Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/228

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218
VIVIAN GREY.

leave its fleshly chamber. I said he wept, as men can weep but once in this world; and yet it would have been impossible for him to have defined what, at that fearful moment, was the cause of his heart's sorrow. Incidents of childhood, of the most trivial nature, and until this moment forgotten, flashed across his memory; he gazed on the smile of his mother—he listened to the sweet tones of his fathers voice—and his hand clenched, with still more agonized grasp, his rude resting-place; and the scalding tears dashed down his cheek in still more ardent torrents. He had no distinct remembrance of what had, so lately, happened; but characters flitted before him as in a theatre in a dream—dim and shadowy, yet full of mysterious and undefinable interest; and then there came a horrible idea across his mind, that his glittering youth was gone, and wasted; and then there was a dark whisper cf treachery, and dissimulation, and dishonour: and then he sobbed as if his