She wanted to bear witness, to testify, to pour
forth both the moving tale and her own sensations, into the ear of some
indulgent and friendly listener. She--she--wanted to tell Colonel
Carteret about it, to enlist his interest, to read him, in part at least,
Darcy Faircloth's letter, and hear his confirmation of the noble spirit
she discerned in it, its poetry, its charm. For the dear man with the
blue eyes would understand, of that she felt confident, understand
fully--and it would set her right with him, if, as she suspected, he was
not somehow quite pleased with her. She caressed the idea, while, so
doing, silence and concealment grew increasingly irksome to her. Oh! she
wanted to speak--and to her father she could not speak.
With that both Damaris' attitude and expression changed, the glory
abruptly departing. She got up off the floor, left the window, and sat
down very soberly, in a red-velvet covered arm-chair, placed before the
flat stone hearth piled with wood ashes.
There truly was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the
otherwise radiant surface--as she now hailed it--of this strangely moving
fraternal relation.
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