Some days went by in her unconsciousness, and when she at length grew
calm--when the fever of her mind had somewhat subsided--she opened her
eyes and found, to her great surprise, her uncle sitting beside her
couch. It was midnight; and this was the hour he had usually chosen when
making his visits to his family. In these stolen moments, his attendance
was chiefly given to that hapless orphan, whose present sufferings he
well knew were in great part attributable to himself.
The thought smote him, for, in reference to her, all feeling had not yet
departed from his soul. There was still a lurking sensibility--a
lingering weakness of humanity--one of those pledges which nature gives
of her old affiliation, and which she never entirely takes away from the
human heart. There are still some strings, feeble and wanting in energy
though they be, which bind even the most reckless outcast in some little
particular to humanity; and, however time, and the world's variety of
circumstance, may have worn them and impaired their firm hold, they
still sometimes, at unlooked-for hours, regrapple the long-rebellious
subject, and make themselves felt and understood as in the first moments
of their creation.
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