He had rushed
over to New York, and of course he had been baffled. Exposure was of
no use where sympathy was for the lucky rather than the duped and
luckless, and where the Anglicised Life-guardsman could expect it
least of all--at a time, too, when all business affairs were
convulsed by the uncertainties of civil war. Alda could not believe
at first that he had done his utmost, and seemed to have reproached
him with weakness and mismanagement; but by her own account she had
roused the innate lion. He would not tell her what had passed in the
interview with his uncle, but he had shuddered over the remembrance;
and when she upbraided him with not having gone far enough, he
terrified her by the fierceness with which he had turned upon her,
bidding her never recur to what she knew nothing about, and muttering
to himself, 'Far enough--thank God I went no further, or I should not
be here now!' and then falling into deep gloom. He had certainly made
Alda afraid of him, and she burst into tears as she told Wilmet,
declaring herself the most miserable girl in the world.
'No, that you can't be, Alda, while he is so good and true.'
'But he says he must sell out! Think of that! Never was anybody so
taken in as I have been!'
'Don't talk so, Alda.
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