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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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324 explanation--playing and trifling are completely banished out of my mind; and I can’t dance attendance on your affectations now!” “My affectations!” he murmured; “what are they? For heaven’s sake, Catherine, don’t look so angry! Despise me as much as you please; I am a worthless, cowardly wretch--I can’t be scorned enough! but I’m too mean for your anger--hate my father, and spare me for contempt.” “Nonsense!” cried Catherine, in a passion. “Foolish, silly boy! And there! he trembles, as if I were really going to touch him! You needn’t bespeak contempt, Linton; anybody will have it spontaneously, at your service. Get off! I shall return home--it is folly dragging you from the hearthstone, and pretending--what do we pretend? Let go my frock! If I pitied you for crying and looking so very frightened, you should spurn such pity. Ellen, tell him how disgraceful this conduct is. Rise, and don’t degrade yourself into an abject reptile--don’t!” With streaming face and an expression of agony, Linton had thrown his nerveless frame along the ground: he seemed convulsed with exquisite terror. “Oh!” he sobbed, “I cannot bear it! Catherine, Catherine, I’m a traitor too, and I dare not tell you! But leave me, and I shall be killed! Dear Catherine, my life is in your hands: and you have said you loved me, and if you did, it wouldn’t harm you. You’ll not go, then? kind, sweet, good Catherine! And perhaps you will consent--and he’ll let me die with you!” My young lady, on witnessing his intense anguish, stooped to raise him. The old feeling of indulgent tenderness overcame her vexation, and she grew thoroughly moved and alarmed. “Consent to what?” she asked. “To stay? Tell me the meaning |
