And what do you think she felt, when having walked some distance
from the spot, she dared to open the crushed paper, and saw written
on it Mary Barton's name, and not only that, but the street in which
she lived! True, a letter or two was torn off, but, nevertheless,
there was the name clear to be recognised. And oh! what terrible
thought flashed into her mind; or was it only fancy? But it looked
very like the writing which she had once known well--the writing of
Jem Wilson, who, when she lived at her brother-in-law's, and he was
a near neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her
letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own
misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so
much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in
all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes
by extraordinary graces and twirls.
If it were his!
Oh! perhaps it was merely that her head was running so on Mary, that
she was associating every trifle with her. As if only one person
wrote in that flourishing, meandering style!
It was enough to fill her mind to think from what she might have
saved Mary by securing the paper.
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