United States or Kyrgyzstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Men sat on tilted chairs beneath awnings along the way and stared at the occupants of the carriage as it passed. It was mid-afternoon, which, in Aden, seemed to be a glaring, shadeless hour and, but for these occasional somnolent starers, a deserted one. Yet people lived here, existed, spent their lives in this crude, poor hideousness, this mean newness; the Leroys lived here!
"She's my cousin Charlotte," said the young fellow; "that's how my mother came to fancy living where we do, when we came down from Woodford to Louisville. She used to visit the Leroys there you see." "Oh," said Alexina, "really? They were very good to me." The blue eyes of the doctor were regarding her intently, but as if thought were concentrated elsewhere.
She blushed, almost deeply, then took it up, and opened it out for him to see. It was a silk riding jacket, in the scarlet and white racing colours of the Leroys, and their coat of arms, worked in silver, upon the breast. "For the Grand National," said Lady Constance, as she refolded the jacket. "You worked it yourself?" questioned the old man abruptly. "Yes," she replied, blushing again.
None who dare warn him to beware of the friendship of Mr. Jasper Vermont. High up in the woods of Buckinghamshire stood Barminster Castle, so old that one-half of its pile dated back to Norman times; while the whole, with the wings and parts added by the successive generations of Leroys, might have passed for a royal palace by reason of its splendour and magnificence.
Needless to say, the Leroys were proud of their ancestral home, for there had been Leroys since William the Conqueror had calmly annexed the land on which it now stood, and had given it to his faithful baron, Philip Le Roi. But they valued still more the love and respect of their people, who in hamlet and village surrounded the castle as naturally as did the woods.
"The finest boy and best shot in Jasmine County," said Mr. Jonas, starting forward as the mules were reined up at the hotel entrance, "and the foolishest, most profoundly wise mother." Alexina was going forward, too. "We that is, I know them," she told him; "they are old friends, the Leroys." For she had known Charlotte in a moment.
"How bright the course looks this morning!" she said, with a charitable wish to change the subject, for Lord Barminster was apt at times to wax caustic over his sister's small weaknesses. "Yes," he said grimly; "like all things dangerous, it is pleasant to the eye. I hate that strip of green it is the grave of many a Leroys' best hope. The turf has always been a fatal snare to our race.
Through the confusion of the dark woods there lay a long line of turf, cut here and there by formidable hedges, and divided by a streak of glittering silver, which was in reality a dangerous stream indeed, higher up it became a torrent forming the final obstacle of the Barminster steeple-course. All the Leroys had been fond of horses.
She had been wondering how she should inquire about the Leroys, and if she really wanted to. She came back to the veranda and the present. "I think it would be charming, too," she replied. "Then we'll go right away. I'll order the carriage, so as to see the sunset," he said, and rose. "You will need wraps for Mrs. Garnier." Somehow a man never thinks the other woman will need anything.
"You can trust the Leroys to have the best of everything. They treat money like dirt, and bow before nothing but Royalty and women. Yet, with it all, there's no stauncher friend than a Leroy." "As Vermont knows only too well," muttered Standon dryly. "By the way, I saw Ada Lester in the Park this morning. Jove! Such furs!"
Word Of The Day