United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling her money and housekeeping troubles. "Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just as much as I can do, of those kinds of work, and a poor girl would waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much, myself.
Their eyes met and what Emerson calls "the deification and transfiguration of life" began to stir Sylvie's pulses, and set her heart beating to a new and singular exaltation.
She smelt the sharp sweetness of the smoke. There was brief talk of the weather; Sylvie felt that while they talked, the two strangers searched the place and the faces of its inmates with cold, keen, suspicious eyes. She was grateful now for her blindness. There came a sharp statement: "We're looking for Ham Rutherford, the murderer." Sylvie's heart contracted in her breast.
This had been upon a guest chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs.
Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply, they both laughed.
This enthusiasm was deeply flattering to old Sylvie's self-love; she regarded it as less due to Pierrette than to her own benevolence. She ended, however, in being affronted by her cousin's success. Pierrette was constantly invited out, and Sylvie allowed her to go, always for the purpose of triumphing over "those ladies."
The mere thought of being jilted by the colonel was torture to Sylvie's brain. She lay in her bed going over and over her own desires, Pierrette's conduct, and the song which had awakened her with the word "marriage." Like the fool she was, instead of looking through the blinds to see the lover, she opened her window without reflecting that Pierrette would hear her.
My lesson, I perceived, must to-night be very short; but the orange-trees, the cacti, the camelias were all served now. Was it my turn? Alas! in the garden were more plants to be looked after, favourite rose-bushes, certain choice flowers; little Sylvie's glad bark and whine followed the receding paletot down the alleys.
Fainter and still fainter grew his breath but he felt near his heart for a little crumpled knot of filmy lace which he always carried a delicate trifle which had fallen from one of Sylvie's pretty evening gowns once, when he had caught her in his arms and sworn his passion. He kissed it now, and inhaled its violet perfume as he took it from his lips he saw that it was stained with blood.
His eyes grew darkly passionate as he spoke, and again Sylvie's heart beat high, but she did not answer in words, softening the notes of her prelude she sang in a rich mezzo-soprano, whose thrilling tone penetrated to every part of the room, the quaint old Breton ballad, "Il serait un roi! Mais quelqu'un a dit, 'Non! Pas pour toi!
Word Of The Day