'The idea of your taking my words so literally as all that!'
'I not only took your words literally, but mean to make you keep them literally.'
Ah Philip, how surprised you were, as indeed you well might be, at my assumption of flightiness! How more than surprised you were afterwards, when I placed every obstacle I could think of in the way to prevent our being alone together; and how honestly you tried to act the part of a lover in the presence of Mrs Tipper and Lilian, insisting upon my keeping my word, and refusing to accept any excuses for delay, Lilian as honestly taking your side.
Fortunately, my maimed hand, which I kept in a sling and made the most of, sufficed to account for my altered appearance. But for that and my bearing towards Lilian, Philip might have suspected. Then he found me so entirely free from anything like pique or anger towards himself, that he could not imagine the change he observed to be occasioned by any fault of his own. I had indeed nothing to dissemble in the way of anger. In my moments of deepest misery, it was given me to see that there had been no intended disloyalty to me. Philip's love for Lilian and her love for him were simply the natural consequence of two so well fitted for each other being thrown together intimately as they had been. I am writing from a distance of time, and of course in a calmer frame of mind than I was in at the moment of the trial; but I know that my thoughts all tended to exonerate them from the first.
None knew better than did I how completely free Lilian was from anything in the way of trying to attract, even as much as girls may honestly do. Knowing what I did--reading both their hearts--it was very precious to me to see their truth and fealty to the right. I knew that if they once perceived my suffering, nothing would induce them to accept happiness that way. I _must_ keep my nerves steady! As much as I was able to compass that first day was to puzzle them all; but even that was a little step--it was something that they could see the change without discovering the cause. Quite enough to begin with.
On Easter Monday last, when several thousands of persons were holiday-making in a public garden out north-westward of London, a loud bang startled the inmates of houses many miles from the spot in all directions--louder than any discharge of artillery, and comparable to a blowing-up on a tremendous scale. It proved on investigation to be due to the explosion of a cylinder no more than twenty-five inches in length by two inches in diameter, filled with one or other of those destructive compositions which chemistry has lately presented to us, and to which have been given the mysterious names of dynamite, lithofracteur, gun-cotton, nitro-glycerine, &c. How such a diabolical sausage got into such a place at such a time, and what the police authorities have had to say about it, we need not detail here; but the subject sets people thinking ugly thoughts about Torpedoes and Infernal Machines.