My Novel: Book 12

"Again," quoth my father, -- "again behold us! We who greeted the commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages more important, -- we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious chant which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be unraveled, and where the shears are to descend." So there they stood, the Family of Caxton, -- all grouping round me, all eager officiously to question, some overanxious prematurely to criticize. "Violante can't have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count," said my mother; "but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy, in the novel of 'CAMILLA'." -- "Ha!" said my father, "and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than a sullied honor. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All things about her forebode an early tomb!"