The danger of impending ruin seemed to have brought her
consolation instead of grief; and in the prayers which she murmured in
her heart as she stood with her arms clasped about Caldwell, when
Fenton drove away that night, there was not a little thanksgiving
mingled with her supplications.
XXXIV
WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED.
Hamlet; iv.--7.
The stock report which caused Fenton such unpleasant sensations was
read that same morning by Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson with keen
satisfaction of a sort seldom known to the truly virtuous. Mrs. Sampson
was engaged in financial transactions of which the very magnitude
caused her naive satisfaction, while the possible results made her
bosom glow with unwonted emotion. Mrs. Sampson's affection for Alfred
Irons was neither deep nor tender in its nature, and in settling the
bill for services rendered in the railroad case there was no sentiment
likely to restrain her from making the best possible bargain. The
bargain she made was of a nature to send her about her flat singing
songs of triumph such as Deborah sang over the slaughter of the
unfortunate Sisera.
The wily but impressible Erastus Snaffle, cheered by the widow's wine,
warmed by her smile, and smitten by her amiable conversation, had
bestowed upon her, merely as a tribute which mammon might pay to the
ever-womanly, three thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock.
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