'A pine-apple!' said Glenmurray, languidly turning over the grapes, and with a sort of distaste putting one of them in his mouth, 'a pine-apple!—I wish you had brought it with all my heart! I protest that I feel as if I could eat a whole one.'
'Well,' replied Adeline, 'if you would enjoy it so much, you certainly ought to have it.'
'But the price, my dear girl!—what was it?'
'Only two guineas,' replied Adeline, forcing a smile.
'Two guineas!' exclaimed Glenmurray: 'No,—that is too much to give—I will not indulge my appetite at such a rate—but, take away the grapes—I can't eat them.'
Adeline, disappointed, removed them from his sight; and, to increase her vexation, Glenmurray was continually talking of pine-apples, and in that way that showed how strongly his diseased appetite wished to enjoy the gratification of eating one. At last, unable to bear to see him struggling with an ungratified wish, she told him that she believed they could afford to buy the pine-apple, as she had written to borrow some money of Dr Norberry, to be paid as soon as Mr Berrendale arrived. In a moment the dull eye of Glenmurray lighted up with expectation; and he, who in health was remarkable for self-denial and temperance, scrupled not, overcome by the influence of the fever which consumed him, to gratify his palate at a rate the most extravagant.
Adeline sighed as she contemplated this change effected by illness; and, promising to be back as soon as possible, she proceeded to a shop to dispose of her lace veil, the only ornament which she had retained; and that not from vanity, but because it concealed from the eye of curiosity the sorrow marked on her countenance. But she knew a piece of muslin would do as well; and for two guineas sold a veil worth treble that sum; but it was to give a minute's pleasure to Glenmurray, and that was enough for Adeline.
On her way to the fruiterer's she saw a crowd at the door of a mean-looking house, and in the midst of it she beheld a mulatto woman, the picture of sickness and despair, supporting a young man who seemed ready to faint every moment, but whom a rough-featured man, regardless of his weakness, was trying to force from the grasp of the unhappy woman; while a mulatto boy, known in Richmond by the name of the Tawny Boy, to whom Adeline had often given halfpence in her walks, was crying bitterly, and hiding his face in the poor woman's apron.
Adeline immediately pressed forward to inquire into the cause of a distress only too congenial to her feelings; and as she did so, the tawny boy looked up, and, knowing her immediately, ran eagerly forward to meet her, seeming, though he did not speak, to associate with her presence an idea of certain relief.
'Oh! it is only a poor man,' replied an old woman in answer to Adeline's inquiries, 'who can't pay his debts,—and so they are dragging him to prison—that's all.' 'They are dragging him to his death too,' cried a younger woman in a gentle accent; 'for he is only just recovering from a bad fever: and if he goes to jail the bad air will certainly kill him, poor soul!'