As they sit
listening to the solemn swell, the confidence of last night rises
in young Edwin Drood's mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is
to that discordance.
'I fancy I can distinguish Jack's voice,' is his remark in a low
tone in connection with the train of thought.
'Take me back at once, please,' urges his Affianced, quickly laying
her light hand upon his wrist. 'They will all be coming out
directly; let us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don't
let us stop to listen to it; let us get away!'
Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of the Close.
They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately enough, along the
old High-street, to the Nuns' House. At the gate, the street being
within sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud's.
She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish schoolgirl again.
'Eddy, no! I'm too sticky to be kissed. But give me your hand,
and I'll blow a kiss into that.'
He does so. She breathes a light breath into it and asks,
retaining it and looking into it:-
'Now say, what do you see?'
'See, Rosa?'
'Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into a hand and see
all sorts of phantoms. Can't you see a happy Future?'
For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate
opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.
CHAPTER IV--MR. SAPSEA
Accepting the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and
conceit--a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more
conventional than fair--then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is
Mr.
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