"
"I don't believe it. It's not in me to go mad about anything
with a masked face and a marble heart. If I loved any woman -
which, thank Fortune! at this present time I do not - and she had
the bad taste not to return it, I should take my hat, make her a
bow, and go directly and love somebody else made of flesh and
blood, instead of cast iron! You know the old song, Ormiston:
'If she be not fair for me
What care I how fair she be!'"
"Kingsley, you know nothing about it!" said Ormiston,
impatiently. "So stop talking nonsense. If you are cold-blooded,
I am not; and - I love her!"
Sir Norman slightly shrugged his shoulders, and flung his
smoked-out weed into a heap of fire-wood.
"Are we near her house?" he asked. "Yonder is the bridge."
"And yonder is the house," replied Ormiston, pointing to a large
ancient building - ancient even for those times - with three
stories, each projecting over the other. "See! while the houses
on either side are marked as pest-stricken, hers alone bears no
cross. So it is: those who cling to life are stricken with
death: and those who, like me, are desperate, even death shuns.
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