United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Next day, a stone as large as a cob-nut, and with strange and beautiful streaks. They carried it home to dinner, and set it on the table, and told the family it was worth a thousand pounds. Bulteel scarcely looked at it; but the vrow trembled and all the young folk glowered at it. In the middle of dinner, it exploded like a cracker, and went literally into diamond-dust.
To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole story. "It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've had the best time of my life in it.
In the afternoon, I received a note from Maurice, telling me that he had inadvertently heard that a fellow in the American Red Cross had seen Miss Sharp's passport, when she had been sent down to Brest for them, and the name on it was Alathea Bulteel Sharp, and judging that the second name sounded as if it might be a well-known English one, he hastened to tell me, in case it should be a clue.
A thousand tents rose like mushrooms; and poor Bulteel stood smoking, and staring amazed, at his own door, and saw a veritable procession of wagons, Cape carts, and powdered travellers file past him to take possession of his hillocks. Him, the proprietor, they simply ignored; they had a committee who were to deal with all obstructions, landlords and tenants included.
She had no telephone they supposed. No, they did not know the address. Auteuil, and the name Bulteel, that is all! Perhaps something could be done on a week-day, but on a Sunday night, in war time, all was impossible. And at last in an agony of doubt and apprehension, I consented to retire to bed. Had I made some mistake? I tried to remember.
"I think I told you that Symons was the second secretary; but I now doubt whether the second was not Rev. Bulteel, of Exeter College, then an evangelical preacher of St. Ebb's Church in Oxford, much attended by Edmund Hall men.
"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice of Madame Bulteel. "All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes. "I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright courage.
Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man." Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the ears of the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'. Her pale face was suffused as she said it.
"For that can do no harm," she thought "I feel that he really ought to know that I have to go all the way to London." Angus, however, on reading the superscription, was fully as perplexed as she was. He was familiar with the street near Chancery Lane where the mysterious "Mr. Bulteel" lived, but the name of Bulteel as a resident in that street was altogether unknown to him.
A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman's plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all.
Word Of The Day