Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (486 page)
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Authors: Wilkie Collins
“Would you have said Yes?” she repeated.
“I was doubting,” he answered — ”I was doubting between Yes and No.”
Her hand tightened on his arm; a sudden trembling seized her in every limb, she could bear it no longer. All her heart went out to him in her next words:
“Were you doubting
for my sake?”
“Yes,” he said. “Take my confession in return for yours — I was doubting for your sake.”
She said no more; she only looked at him. In that look the truth reached him at last. The next instant she was folded in his arms, and was shedding delicious tears of joy, with her face hidden on his bosom.
“Do I deserve my happiness?” she murmured, asking the one question at last. “Oh, I know how the poor narrow people who have never felt and never suffered would answer me if I asked them what I ask you. If
they
knew my story, they would forget all the provocation, and only remember the offense; they would fasten on my sin, and pass all my suffering by. But you are not one of them! Tell me if you have any shadow of a misgiving! Tell me if you doubt that the one dear object of all my life to come is to live worthy of you! I asked you to wait and see me; I asked you, if there was any hard truth to be told, to tell it me here with your own lips. Tell it, my love, my husband! — tell it me now!”
She looked up, still clinging to him as she clung to the hope of her better life to come.
“Tell me the truth!” she repeated.
“With my own lips?”
“Yes!” she answered, eagerly. “Say what you think of me with your own lips.”
He stooped and kissed her.
THE END
First published in serial form in Cornhill Magazine in 20 monthly installments,
Armadale
(1866) is a semi-epistolary novel. Some chapters comprise letters between the various characters, while other chapters record the events as the characters perceive them.
The novel features a complicated plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up.
ARMADALE
TO
JOHN FORSTER
In acknowledgment of the services which he has rendered to the cause of literature by his “Life of Goldsmith;” and in affectionate remembrance of a friendship which is associated with some of the happiest years of my life.
Readers in general — on whose friendly reception experience has given me some reason to rely — will, I venture to hope, appreciate whatever merit there may be in this story without any prefatory pleading for it on my part. They will, I think, see that it has not been hastily meditated or idly wrought out. They will judge it accordingly, and I ask no more.
Readers in particular will, I have some reason to suppose, be here and there disturbed, perhaps even offended, by finding that “Armadale” oversteps, in more than one direction, the narrow limits within which they are disposed to restrict the development of modern fiction — if they can.
Nothing that I could say to these persons here would help me with them as Time will help me if my work lasts. I am not afraid of my design being permanently misunderstood, provided the execution has done it any sort of justice. Estimated by the clap-trap morality of the present day, this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which is of all time, it is only a book that is daring enough to speak the truth.
LONDON, April, 1866.
ARMADALE
CONTENTS
II. THE SOLID SIDE OF THE SCOTCH CHARACTER.
III. THE WRECK OF THE TIMBER SHIP.
I. THE MYSTERY OF OZIAS MIDWINTER.
1.
From Ozias Midwinter to Mr. Brock
.
From Ozias Midwinter to Mr. Brock
.
II. ALLAN AS A LANDED GENTLEMAN.
V. MOTHER OLDERSHAW ON HER GUARD.
XI. MISS GWILT AMONG THE QUICKSANDS.
.
From the Rev. Decimus Brock to Ozias Midwinter
.
VII. THE MARTYRDOM OF MISS GWILT.
1.
From Mr. Bashwood to Miss Gwilt
.