He was kind to his pupils and affable to
all who came in contact with him; but the kernel of his life, his
secret, was kept as snugly shut up as though he had been dumb. In
talking to his acquaintances of England and his life there, he
omitted the episode of Batton Castle and Emmeline as if it had no
existence in his calendar at all. Though of towering importance to
himself, it had filled but a short and small fragment of time, an
ephemeral season which would have been wellnigh imperceptible, even
to him, at this distance, but for the incident it enshrined.
One day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old English
newspaper, he observed a paragraph which, short as it was, contained
for him whole tomes of thrilling information--rung with more
passion-stirring rhythm than the collected cantos of all the poets.
It was an announcement of the death of the Duke of Hamptonshire,
leaving behind him a widow, but no children.
The current of Alwyn's thoughts now completely changed. On looking
again at the newspaper he found it to be one that was sent him long
ago, and had been carelessly thrown aside. But for an accidental
overhauling of the waste journals in his study he might not have
known of the event for years. At this moment of reading the Duke
had already been dead seven months. Alwyn could now no longer bind
himself down to machine-made synecdoche, antithesis, and climax,
being full of spontaneous specimens of all these rhetorical forms,
which he dared not utter.
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