The last of such
a race is a kind of crystallisation, dangerously, fatally brilliant, the
concentration of all the forces that have gone before."
At one of their halting-places, Miss Lovel's companion insisted upon
bringing her a cup of coffee and a sponge-cake, and waited upon her with a
most brotherly attention. At Normanton they changed to a branch line, and
had to wait an hour and a half in that coldest dreariest period of the
night that comes before daybreak. Here the stranger established Clarissa in
a shabby little waiting-room, where he made up the fire with his own hands,
and poked it into a blaze with his walking-stick; having done which, he
went out into the bleak night and paced the platform briskly for nearly an
hour, smoking a couple of those cigars which would have beguiled his night
journey, had he been alone.
He had some thoughts of a third cigar, but put it back into his case, and
returned to the waiting-room.
"I'll go and have a little more talk with the prettiest woman I ever met in
my life," he said to himself. "It is not very likely that we two shall ever
see each other again. Let me carry away the memory of her face, at any
rate. And she is a Lovel! Will she be as unfortunate as the rest of her
race, I wonder? God forbid!"
Clarissa was sitting by the fire in the dingy little waiting-room, with one
elbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin leaning on her hand, and
her eyes fixed thoughtfully upon a dull red chasm in the coals.
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