Lennox found herself locked in the arms of her son.
For some minutes the tide of feeling was too strong for utterance, and
"My mother!" "My son!" were the only words that either could articulate.
At length, raising his head, Colonel Lennox fixed his eyes on his
mother's face with a gaze of deep and fearful inquiry; but no returning
glance spoke there. With that mournful vacuity, peculiar to the blind,
which is a thousand times more touching than all the varied expression
of the living orb, she continued to regard the vacant space which
imagination had filled with the image she sought in vain to behold.
At this confirmation of his worst fears a shade of the deepest
anguish overspread the visage of her son. He raised his eyes, as in
agony, to heaven--then threw himself on his mother's bosom; and as Mary
hurried from the apartment she heard the sob which burst from his manly
heart, as he exclaimed, "My dear mother! do I indeed find you
thus?"
CHAPTER Xl
"There is more complacency in the negligence of some men, than in what
is called the good breeding of others; and the little absences of the
heart are often more interesting and engaging than the punctilious
attention of a thousand professed sacrificers to the graces."--MACKENZIE.
POWERFUL emotions are the certain levellers of ordinary feelings. When
Mary met Colonel Lennox in the breakfast-room the following morning, he
accosted her not with the ceremony of a stranger but with the frankness
of a heart careless of common forms, and spoke of his mother with
indications of sensibility which he vainly strove to repress.
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