Poor Gould and his niece had both looked forward to
Elvira's coming of age as necessarily bringing them to England, but
her uncle's health had suffered from the dissipation he had found his
only resource. Liquor had become his consolation in the life to
which he was condemned, and in the hotel life of America was only too
easily attainable.
His death deprived Elvira of the last barrier to the attempts of an
unscrupulous woman, who was determined not to let her escape.
Elvira's longing to return home made her spread her toils closer.
She kept her moving from one fashionable resort to another, still
attended by Gilbert, who was beginning to grow impatient to secure
his prize.
"How I hated it," said Elvira. "I knew she was false and cruel by
that time, but it was just like being in a trap between them. I
loathed them more and more, but I couldn't get away."
Nurtured as she had been, she was helpless and ignorant about the
commonest affairs of life, and the sight of American independence
never inspired her with the idea of breaking the bondage in which she
was spellbound. Still, she shrank back with instinctive horror from
every advance of Gilbert's, and at last, to pique her, Lisette
brought forward the intelligence that Allen Brownlow was married.
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