"If anything should happen to her, I would never forgive myself; if I
should be the unfortunate means of severing any ties that SHE may have
formed, I could never look her in the face again. Of course, I can well
understand that our presence here must be onerous to you, and that you
naturally look forward to any sacrifice--even that of the interests
of your country, and the defiance of its laws--to relieve you from a
position so embarrassing as yours has become. I only trust, however,
that the ill effects you allude to as likely to occur to yourself after
our departure may be exaggerated by your sensitive nature. It would be
an obligation added to the many that we owe you, which Mr. Brimmer would
naturally find he could not return--and that, I can safely say, he would
not hear of for a single moment."
While speaking, she had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her
mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her
shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom
with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched
kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still
unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three
fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, and, with a slight inclination
of her bared head, with its accurately parted brown hair, passed slowly
out of the corridor.
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