Читать книгу The Treasure of Heaven - Marie Corelli - Страница 8

Mrs. Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands convulsively.

"Oh, you little fool!" she burst out, "what have you done?"

Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves.

"I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own instinct!" she said, in sepulchral tones. "It came to me like a flash, when I was talking to him this evening! I said to myself, 'he is in a moral mood.' And he was. Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful! If I had only thought he would carry on that mood with you, I would have warned you! You could have held off a little—it would perhaps have been the wiser course."

"I should think it would indeed!" cried Lucy, dabbing her eyes with her scented handkerchief; "He would have left me every penny he has in the world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as possible!"

Mrs. Sorrel sank back with a groan.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" she wailed feebly. "Can nothing be done?"

"Nothing!" And Lucy, now worked up to hysterical pitch, felt as if she could break the windows, beat her mother, or do anything else equally reckless and irresponsible. "I shall be left to myself now—he will never ask me to his house again, never give me any parties or drives or opera-boxes or jewels—he will never come to see me, and I shall have no pleasure at all! I shall sink into a dowdy, frowsy, shabby-genteel old maid for the rest of my life! It is detestable!" and she uttered a suppressed small shriek on the word, "It has been a hateful, abominable birthday! Everybody will be laughing at me up their sleeves! Think of Lady Larford!"

This suggestion was too dreadful for comment, and Mrs. Sorrel closed her eyes, visibly shuddering.

"Who would have thought it possible!" she moaned drearily, "a millionaire, with such mad ideas! I had thought him always such a sensible man! And he seemed to admire you so much! What will he do with all his money?"

The fair Lucy sighed, sobbed, and swallowed her tears into silence. And again, like the doubtful refrain of a song in a bad dream, her mother moaned and murmured—

"What will he do with all his money!"