Mr Cosway and the Landlady
by Wilkie CollinsGenre: Romance
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Novella
Recommended Adaptation Length:
Candidate for Adaptation? Not Reviewed
EXCERPT:
“But for that Cosway,’ she said (I spare you the epithet which she put before your name), ‘with my money and position, I might have married a needy lord, and sunned myself in my old age in the full blaze of the peerage.’ Do you understand how she hated you, now? Enough of the subject! The moral of it, my dear Cosway, is to leave this place, and try what change of scene will do for you. I have time to spare; and I will go abroad with you. When shall it be?”
“Let me wait a day or two more,” Cosway pleaded.
Stone shook his head. “Still hoping, my poor friend, for a line from Miss Restall? You distress me.”
“I am sorry to distress you, Stone. If I can get one pitying word from _her_, I can submit to the miserable life that lies before me.”
“Are you not expecting too much?”
“You wouldn’t say so, if you were as fond of her as I am.”
They were silent. The evening slowly darkened; and the mistress came in as usual with the candles. She brought with her a letter for Cosway.
He tore it open; read it in an instant; and devoured it with kisses. His highly wrought feelings found their vent in a little allowable exaggeration. “She has saved my life!” he said, as he handed the letter to Stone.
It only contained these lines:
“My love is yours, my promise is yours. Through all trouble, through all profanation, through the hopeless separation that may be before us in this world, I live yours–and die yours. My Edwin, God bless and comfort you.”
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