United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were many toasts before the supper ended and the last one Jimmie drank "To Ursula"! As he stood up to propose it, his glasses dangled from their ribbon, his shoulders were squared. In the soft and shaded light we were spared the gray in his hair it was the old Jimmie, gay and gallant! "To Ursula!" he said, and the words sparkled. "To Ursula!" I looked at Elise.
Thou shalt keep them well, learn them to be good Catholics, and deliver them to the Black Nuns when they demand it." Ursula courtesied again, and "hoped she should do her duty." "So do I hope," said the priest. "But I give thee warning, Ursula Felstede, that thy duty hath not been over well done ere this: and 'tis high time thou shouldst amend if thou desire not to be brought to book."
Halifax sat down by the roadside, bathed Muriel's forehead and smoothed her hair; but still the little curls lay motionless against the mother's breast, and still to every question she only answered "that she was not hurt." All this while the post-chaise was waiting. "What must be done?" I inquired of Ursula; for it was no use asking John anything.
"Poor people!" he added, "how can I blame them? I was actually dumb before them to-night, when they said I must take the cost of what I do they must have bread for their children. But so must I for mine. Lord Luxmore is the cause of all." Here I heard or fancied I heard out of the black shadow behind the loom, a heavy sigh. John and Ursula were too anxious to notice it.
"Ay, ay," said Dame Ursula; "even so I never knew a Scot of you but was descended, as ye call it, from some great house or other; and a piteous descent it often is and as for the distance you speak of, it is so great as to put you out of sight of each other.
"Well, after all," thought I, "I can scarcely be disappointed; if such an ugly scoundrel as Sylvester had no difficulty in getting such a nice wife as Ursula, surely I, who am not a tenth part so ugly, cannot fail to obtain the hand of Isopel Berners, uncommonly fine damsel though she be. Husbands do not grow upon hedgerows; she is merely gone after a little business and will return to-morrow."
"You're a lucky young dog, Clar, that's what you are;" and the son laughed with the father at this excellent joke, though the rest of the company looked on with great gravity. Ursula, for her part, turned with wondering eyes from the new-comer to her old friend, Sir Robert. "What does he mean?" she asked, with an appealing look.
He would take up his quarters in the room which he had occupied as a scholar, where he had studied, practised music, trained himself in the art of composition, and in leisure hours had even drawn and painted a little. Old Ursula, as he had learned from the legal document which informed him of his inheritance, was taking care of the property bequeathed to him.
The old doctor thought over this remark so anxiously that the abbe and Monsieur Bongrand were troubled by the sorrowful expression of his face. "What pains you?" they said, when Ursula had left them. "Will she live?" replied the doctor. "Can so tender and delicate a flower endure the trials of the heart?" Nevertheless, the "little dreamer," as the abbe called her, was working hard.
But then Phoebe represented to Ursula the only glimpse she had ever had into a world which looked gay and splendid to the country girl a world in which Phoebe had appeared to her as a princess reigning in glory and delight. Ursula forgot both her companions and her recent occupation. Would the young lady in black notice her; stop, perhaps, and talk to her remember her?
Word Of The Day