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How much am I worth? Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak oftwenty thousand pounds, I think they saybut what is that? Twenty thousand pounds? Here was a new stunnerI had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now. Well, said he, if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast. It is a large sumdont you think there is a mistake? No mistake at all. Perhaps you have read the figures wrongit may be two thousand! It is written in letters, not figures,twenty thousand. I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on. If it were not such a very wild night, he said, I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must een leave you to your sorrows. Good-night. He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. Stop one minute! I cried. Well? It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the- way place, had the power to aid in my discovery. Oh! I am a clergyman, he said; and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters. Again the latch rattled. No; that does not satisfy me! I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. It is a very strange piece of business, I added; I must know more about it. Another time. No; to-night!to-night! and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. You certainly shall not go till you have told me all, I said. I would rather not just now. You shall!you must! I would rather Diana or Mary informed you. Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so. |
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