Clara Vaughan, Volume II (of III)

hat I saw last night? Blind though I am, one face is ever before me. No thickening of the me

ill excite you so, my good frien

John. Let him stay in my sitting-room, open the folding-doo

ow. I feel obliged to him for not reminding me that the fault was all my own. Then I implore

teps; then he shuts the door of the sitting-room. All he knows is not very much. They are refugees, Italian

es he not a

een demanded by their Government. Wonderful now, isn't it? The two fellows who have committed murder their Government would not give sixpence f

uzzle. Being a true Englishman, he knows no more of serfdom, than of the dark half of the moon. I

arrest them? He said th

an fight. They were desperate men in a private quarrel, particular when they could come round a corner, and when women w

inst my enemy? I need n

t needles through my eyes. And I co

not like a juryman. He was quite convinced; and his eyes should never be off that ma

ld his evidence be a mystery to me? "Catch him at once," was my idea; but a hot and foolish one. "Get up the evidence f

the Continent; he was a political refugee. America was his only bourne beyond the Inspector's j

satisfied, but I could not help myself. If, in my helpless blindness, I offended Inspector C

now him again. Moreover, it saved my energies from waste. As to the other three, he

rstand what freedom is. What good was it to such fellows as those? They would only be free of one another's throats. And like all of us, with most rare exception, next to freedom, he valued

should be the recovery of my sight. If I were to be blind till death, the purpose of my life was lost, and I might as well die at once. B

trict orders had been given that no one should be admitted

one blind along of some chemical stuff, two big tears came out of her long blue eyes, same as the wet out of a pennorth of violets, Miss; and

come next day, and deliver his opinion, and then the doctor might betake himself to things he understood, if indeed he understood anything, which she did not believe he did, because he had said she was not to come. My drawings too she admired, much more than they deserved, and her brother Conrad must come and see them, he was so fond of drawing, and there was nothing he could not do. She was so sorry she must go now, but old Cora must be tired of patroling, and she herself had a lecture to attend upon the chemical affinity of bodies. What it meant she had no idea, but that would not matter the least; some of the clever girls said they did,

he must have looked such a sage! The thought of that made me laugh, as well as the absurdity of t

hen old Cora would fetch her home to tea. And she had very great hopes, that if she could only persuade her papa to deliver a lecture in my

me, and off she ran, after telling me to be sure t

one, the usual reaction commenced. Moreover, although as the saying is, the sight of her would have been good for sore eyes, the effort at seeing her, which

, prepared betimes ere life appeared, the food the blind receive but cannot taste? If so, far better to be blind from birth. Well I know the taste from memory; shall I never taste it else? Has beauty lost its way to me?

olid or liquid we know not), whose subtle volume has no bourne or track; light, the dayside half of life, le