Not All a Dream

Dead! buried! lost for evermore, as far as
earth's for evermore would extend. He was an old man, so lately
exultant in the full strength of manhood. The utter loneliness of
his life was insupportable to think about. He got up hastily, and
tried to forget what never more might be, in a hurried dressing
for the breakfast in Harley Street.

He could not attend to all the lawyer's details, which, as he
saw, made Margaret's eyes dilate, and her lips grow pale, as one
by one fate decreed, or so it seemed, every morsel of evidence
which would exonerate Frederick, should fall from beneath her
feet and disappear. Even Mr. Lennox's well-regulated professional
voice took a softer, tenderer tone, as he drew near to the
extinction of the last hope. It was not that Margaret had not
been perfectly aware of the result before. It was only that the
details of each successive disappointment came with such
relentless minuteness to quench all hope, that she at last fairly
gave way to tears. Mr. Lennox stopped reading.

'I had better not go on,' said he, in a concerned voice. 'It was
a foolish proposal of mine. Lieutenant Hale,' and even this
giving him the title of the service from which he had so harshly
been expelled, was soothing to Margaret, 'Lieutenant Hale is
happy now; more secure in fortune and future prospects than he
could ever have been in the navy; and has, doubtless, adopted his
wife's country as his own.'