Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/289

Rh death, even in the face the most familiar to us; it has already taken its likeness from the hereafter, so dreadful and so dark. "I cannot bear to see you perishing thus; you have many friends, do let me apply to them?" "Friends!" answered Walter, bitterly, "I have no friends. While I could work for them, or amuse them, they were glad enough to flatter and caress me; now that I am broken in health and spirits, that my soul has worn itself out in their service, who of all that have owed pleasant hours to my pages will care that the hand which wrote now lies languid, scarcely able to trace its own name!" "Do not talk thus," said she. "Why not?" interrupted Walter, "it is the truth. I loathe, I despise my kind; I grieve over the labour that I have wasted on them. I should regret every generous hope, every lofty emotion, did I not think they must rise up in bitter mockery against them." Lavinia looked bewildered; she could as little understand this outburst of impassioned anger, as she understood his former bursts of