Explore "Ernest Maltravers Book V" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Tell me, sir, Have you cast up your state, rated your land, And find it able to endure the charge? " /The Noble Gentleman/.
By degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first shock of that unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged disappointment that followed it, he became sensible of a strange kind of happiness or contentment. Alice was not in poverty, she was not eating the unhallowed bread of vice, or earning the bitter wages of laborious penury. He saw her in reputable, nay, opulent circumstances. A dark nightmare, that had often, amidst the pleasures of youth, or the triumphs of literature, weighed upon his breast, was removed. He breathed more freely -- he could sleep in peace. His conscience could no longer say to him, "She who slept upon thy bosom is a wanderer upon the face of the earth -- exposed to every temptation, perishing perhaps for want. " That single sight of Alice had been like the apparition of the injured Dead conjured up at Heraclea -- whose sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the spectres of remorse.