United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At such a distance, it was easy to throw herself upon his mercy, and it was safer to write him all while he was far away, so that there might be nothing left to rouse his anger if he returned. She had no lack of words with which to describe Reanda's treatment of her; but she was also willing to take all the blame of the mistake she had made in marrying him.
She was hardly aware of them, and when she felt them on her cheeks she wondered why she was crying, for she did not often shed tears, and was a woman of singularly well balanced nature, able to control herself on the rare occasions when she felt any strong emotion. In spite of Reanda's conduct, she determined not to leave matters as they were without attempting to improve them.
She wrote a note to Paul Griggs, asking him to come and see her during the afternoon. He could not refuse to answer the summons, knowing, as he did, that he must in honour respond to any demand for an explanation coming from Reanda's side. Gloria wished him to reply to the note, giving an excuse and hinting that no good could come of any meeting.
I gave it to her, and she should be grateful. She also is free, as I am." "It is horrible!" exclaimed Francesca, with sorrowful emphasis. She blamed herself quite as much as Reanda or Gloria, because she had brought them together and had suggested the marriage. Reanda's thin shoulders went up, and he smiled incredulously. "I do not see what is so horrible," he answered.
He had such a friend, indeed, in Francesca Campodonico, but he was too proud to turn to her, and too deeply conscious that she had done all she could to give Gloria the social position the latter coveted. Francesca, on her side, was not slow to notice that something was radically wrong. Reanda's manner had changed by degrees since his marriage.
Whether she had or not, she had done things which had wounded his innocent young wife. In a sudden and painful illumination of the past, she saw that she herself had not been sinless; that she had been selfish, if nothing worse; that she had craved Reanda's presence and devoted friendship, if nothing more; that death had taken from her more than a friend.
The selfishness with a tendency to cruelty which was a working spring of her father's character was strong in her, and craved the satisfaction of wounding. A part of the sudden joy in life which she felt as she walked towards what had been her home, lay in the certainty of dealing back fourfold hurt for every real and fancied injury she had ever suffered at Reanda's hands.
Accustomed as she was to living with her father, who was gloomy and morose, and to seeing much of Paul Griggs, whose powers of silence were phenomenal at that time, Reanda's easy grace of conversation charmed and flattered her.
She glanced at Reanda's face, and instantly decided to receive the American alone in the drawing-room, on the other side of the house. "Why do you not receive him here?" asked Reanda, carelessly. "Because " she hesitated. "I should rather see him in the drawing-room," she added a moment later, without giving any further explanation.
Donna Francesca, as the last of her branch of the family and an orphan at an early age, had of course been brought up in the house of her relatives of Gerano, and from her childhood had known Reanda's father, and Angelo himself, who was fully ten years older than she.
Word Of The Day