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It was like a rapid, blinding flash of lightning in a leaden sky. On Thursday, the evening became a little more animated. Laurent, although bored to death, nevertheless made a point of not missing one of these gatherings. As a measure of prudence he desired to be known and esteemed by the friends of Camille. So he had to lend an ear to the idle talk of Grivet and old Michaud.
Her heart and her feet alike were leaden. She was too far gone for tears or sobs. It was not anguish that she felt; but bitterness so great that she could only hate Toby. She had loved him so much! And this was the end of him. She felt her love killed at a blow, and she was without resource. Suddenly strong fingers were upon Sally's shoulder. In other days she would have been dominated.
Two lines of helmeted men went over the crest of the hill. Private Cowan was no longer conscious of aching feet and leaden legs or of the burden that bowed his shoulders. There was a pounding in his ears, and in his mind a verse of Scripture that had lingered inexplicably there since their last billet at Comprey.
Pound said there was a letter. Is Mr. Vane coming?" "He was out yachting. Mrs. Vane expected him home yesterday, so it is to be hoped he will be here to-day." "Whatever will be done if he does not come?" she breathed. "The leaden coffin ought to be soldered down, for you know, air, the state he was in when he died." "It can be soldered down without Mr. Vane." "Of course without Mr. Vane.
Then he had cruel headaches, sometimes shooting pains at the base of his skull or the top of his head, sometimes a leaden heaviness. His eyes troubled him. Sometimes it was as though red-hot needles were piercing his eyeballs. He was subject to fits of dizziness, when he could not see to read, and had to stop for a minute or two.
The plan was no sooner thought of than Bart proceeded to put it in execution. He waded the shallow pretty easily, though he could not help wondering at the manner in which his feet sank down into the soft sand, which seemed to let them in right up to the knees at once, and then to close so tightly round them that, to use his own words, he seemed to have been thrusting his legs into leaden boots.
So he stumbled on, with leaden legs and bursting sides, till as if Fate had not yet dealt him her last worst buffet on turning a corner in the road he almost ran under the wheels of a dog-cart, in which, as it pulled up, was apparent the portly form of Farmer Larkin, the arch-enemy, whose ducks he had been shying stones at that very morning!
The struggles that poor thing must have gone through, the leaden hours of dull, torpid misery, the agonizing moments of acute remorse, the perpetual spirit-wearing conflict between duty and inclination, much to the discomfiture of the former; and the haunting face of Cousin Edward continually rising on that heated imagination, pleading, reproaching, suing till she loved him, if possibly more madly in his absence than when he was by her side.
His lordship was just wondering whether, if approached in a softened mood, the other might not disgorge something quite big, when a large, warm rain-drop fell on his hand. From the bushes round about came an ever increasing patter. The sky was leaden. He looked round him for shelter. He had reached the rose-garden in the course of his perambulations. At the far end was a summerhouse.
The leaden grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little better. There was much that needed readjusting.
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