Charles Dickens: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

54. Chapter Fifty-four (continued)

'Oh, Miss Pecksniff, why didn't you leave me alone! Was it not cruel, CRUEL! Oh, my goodness, have you not been a witness of my feelings--have you not seen them flowing from my eyes--did you not, yourself, reproach me with weeping more than usual on that dreadful night when last we met--in that house--where I once was peaceful-- though blighted--in the society of Mrs Todgers!

'But it was written--in the Talmud--that you should involve yourself in the inscrutable and gloomy Fate which it is my mission to accomplish, and which wreathes itself--e'en now--about in temples. I will not reproach, for I have wronged you. May the Furniture make some amends!

'Farewell! Be the proud bride of a ducal coronet, and forget me! Long may it be before you know the anguish with which I now subscribe myself--amid the tempestuous howlings of the--sailors,

'Unalterably,

'Never yours,

'AUGUSTUS.'

They thought as little of Miss Pecksniff, while they greedily perused this letter, as if she were the very last person on earth whom it concerned. But Miss Pecksniff really had fainted away. The bitterness of her mortification; the bitterness of having summoned witnesses, and such witnesses, to behold it; the bitterness of knowing that the strong-minded women and the red-nosed daughters towered triumphant in this hour of their anticipated overthrow; was too much to be borne. Miss Pecksniff had fainted away in earnest.

What sounds are these that fall so grandly on the ear! What darkening room is this!

And that mild figure seated at an organ, who is he! Ah Tom, dear Tom, old friend!

Thy head is prematurely grey, though Time has passed thee and our old association, Tom. But, in those sounds with which it is thy wont to bear the twilight company, the music of thy heart speaks out--the story of thy life relates itself.