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Alas! A Novel. Broughton Rhoda
Читать онлайн.Название Alas! A Novel
Год выпуска 0
isbn http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34428
Автор произведения Broughton Rhoda
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
"When next I dream of heaven," she says, in her tender, vibrating voice, "it will be like this. Do you ever dream of heaven? I often do, and I always wake crying because it is not true; but" – with a joyful change of key – "I will not cry any more without better cause. Since I came here I have found earth beautiful and delightful enough for me!"
He looks back at her, hardly hearing her words, but chiding himself fiercely for the disloyal thought which he has entertained, however unwillingly; the thought that the foul fiend of madness could ever, even temporarily, have defiled the temple of those eyes whence reason and feeling, so sweetly wedded, are shining out upon him, unworthy as he is of their rays.
"Since you came here?" he repeats in a sort of dreamy interrogation; "only since you came here?"
"You must not take me up so sharply!" she cries in a voice of playful remonstrance, in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. "I warn you that I will not be taken up so sharply! I did not say, 'only since I came here!' I said, 'Since I came here!'"
CHAPTER XIV
Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a tête-à-tête, as their tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light, will bruise her arm – any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused – playfully at first – telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and featously" from her lips.
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