Читать книгу It May Be True, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Henry Wood - Страница 5
CHAPTER V.
DEFEAT
Оглавление"Art thou then desolate
Of friends, of hopes forsaken? Come to me!
I am thine own. Have trusted hearts proved false?
Why didst thou ever leave me? Know'st thou all
I would have borne, and called it joy to bear,
For thy sake? Know'st thou that thy voice hath power
To shake me with a thrill of happiness
By one kind tone?—to fill mine eyes with tears
Of yearning love? And thou—Oh! thou didst throw
That crushed affection back upon my heart.
Yet come to me!"
"'Tis he—what doth he here!"
Lara.
The great bell rang out at the lodge gate, and Charles Linchmore dashed up to the Hall almost as hastily as he had left it, and with scarce a word of greeting to the old butler, whom he passed on his way to the drawing-room, and never staying to change his dress, he strode on, all flushed and heated as he was, with his hurried journey and desperate thoughts, until he stood face to face with Mrs. Linchmore.
"Why Charles!" exclaimed she, "what on earth has happened? What is the matter?"
"Nothing," he replied. "Where's Frances?"
"Nothing," she rejoined, indignantly, "to come into the room in such a plight as this! Look at the splashed state of your boots; and then your face. No one can look at that and not suspect something dreadful having happened. I never saw anything so changed and altered as it is."
"I dare say. I don't much care."
"Are you mad? Where have you been?"
"Nowhere. Where's Frances?" he asked again.
"I do not know. But I advise you to make yourself a little more presentable before you seek her. These freaks—mad freaks of riding half over the country, no one knows where, are not agreeable to those you come in contact with afterwards," and Mrs. Linchmore pushed her chair further away from him, and smoothed the rich folds of her dress, as though the act of doing that would soothe her ruffled temper.
"It was a mad freak," replied he, and without waiting for another word, or tendering an apology for his disordered dress, he strode away again, with the full determination of finding Frances.
Every room below stairs he searched, but in vain; she was nowhere, and driven reckless by the agony of his thoughts he went straight up to her own room, and opened the door.
She was lying on the sofa, her eyes red and swollen with weeping, passionate, hopeless tears at the thought that long before now he and Amy had met, and he consequently lost to herself for ever.
"Charles!" she exclaimed, springing off the sofa, her cheeks flushing hotly with surprise and pleasure.
But another glance at his face, and her heart sank within her, for its expression almost terrified her.
He closed the door and came and stood opposite to where she was, looking as though he would have struck her.
She quailed visibly before his menacing glance. Then resolutely regained the mastery over herself, and drawing up her figure proudly, she said,
"Do you know this is my room? I wonder how you dare come here."
"Your room? Well, what if it is, I care not," he replied. "I am reckless of everything."
"But I am not; and—and," she hesitated, and tried again to steady her beating heart, "what—what has happened, Charles, that you look so strangely?"
