Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/254

244 he says. There is still the same freedom from pain—the same deadness to all sensation where the suffering was most acute.

My worst fears are realized—mortification has commenced. The doctor has told him there is no hope—no words can describe his anguish—I can write no more. The next was still more distressing in the tenor of its contents. The sufferer was fast approaching dissolution—dragged almost to the verge of that awful chasm he trembled to contemplate, from which no agony of prayers or tears could save him. Nothing could comfort him now: Hattersley's rough attempts at consolation were utterly in vain. The world was nothing to him: life and all its interests, its petty cares and transient pleasures were a cruel mockery. To talk of the past, was to torture him with vain remorse; to refer to the future, was to increase his anguish; and yet to be silent, was to leave him a prey to his own