[The Disowned<br> Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link book
The Disowned
Complete

CHAPTER X
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Her cheek leaned upon her hand, and large tears flowed fast and burningly over the small and delicate fingers.

The comb that had confined her tresses lay at her feet, and the high dress which concealed her swelling breast had been loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throbbings which had rebelled against its cincture; all appeared to announce that bitterness of grief when the mind, as it were, wreaks its scorn upon the body in its contempt for external seemings, and to proclaim that the present more subdued and softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst far less quiet and uncontrolled.

Woe to those who eat the bread of dependence their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.
Isabel St.Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to the reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy relation of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was consigned.
Major-General Cornelius St.Leger, whose riches had been purchased in India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because the superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his giving vent to it upon her.

That sister, Miss Diana St.Leger, was a meagre gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud voice and commanding aspect.

Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced at heart to find some one whom she had such right and reason to make in awe of herself; and from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny of her two protectors.


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