She could not bear the association or memory, I believe, and
with the imperious power of recovery used to keep me reading Mayne
Reid's storybooks to her incessantly, or else playing at backgammon.
I hate the sound of dice to this hour, and when I heard that unhappy
French criminals, the night before their execution, are apt to send
for Fenimore Cooper's novels, it seemed to reveal Dora's state of
mind.
After two or three days, George Yolland came up to see me. He had
been to see Dermot, and gave me comfort as to his condition and the
care taken of him; but the chief cause of the visit was that they
wanted my authority for the needful destruction of whatever had been
in that room, and could not be passed through fire. Mr. Yolland had
brought me my Harold's big, well-worn pocket-book, which he said must
undergo the same doom, for though I was contagion proof, yet harm
might be laid up for others, and only what was absolutely necessary
must be saved.
First of all, indeed, lay in their crumpled paper poor Dora's fatal
gifts, treasured, no doubt, as probably her last; and there, in a
deep leathern pocket, was another little parcel with Viola's crystal
cross, which her mother had made her return. She might have that
now, it would bear disinfecting; but the Irish heath-bells that told
of autumn days at Killey Marey must go, and that brief note to me
that had been treasured up--yes, and the quaint old housewife, with
D.
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