She has since that time continued to take the ingots.
"Yet you behold," continued the old alchemist, casting an
inexpressibly mournful glance around the wretched apartment, "the
way we live. Our food is insufficient and of bad quality; we never
buy clothes; the rent of this hole is a mere nothing. What am I to
think of the wretched girl who plunges me into this misery? Is she
a miser, think you?--or a female gamester?--or--or--does she
squander it riotously in places I know not of? O Doctor, Doctor!
do not blame me if I heap imprecations on her head, for I have
suffered bitterly!" The poor man here closed his eyes and sank
back groaning on his bed.
This singular narrative excited in me the strangest emotions. I
glanced at the girl Marion, who had been a patient listener to
these horrible accusations of cupidity, and never did I behold a
more angelic air of resignation than beamed over her countenance.
It was impossible that anyone with those pure, limpid eyes; that
calm, broad forehead; that childlike mouth, could be such a monster
of avarice or deceit as the old man represented.
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