United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She looked up at Travis, but when she saw his face the smile went out of hers. It changed to fear. All the other passions in his face had settled into one cruel cynical smile around his mouth a smile of winning or of death. For the first time in her life she feared Richard Travis. "I must go now," said Alice Westmore to the old men "but I'll sing you a verse or two."
And so the old question presented itself in another shape: if she had nothing to reproach herself for, why was it intolerable to her to live on Bessy's money? The fact that she was doing no actual service at Westmore did not account for her scruples she would have been the last person to think that a sick servant should be docked of his pay.
She began at once to question him about Westmore, and the change in his face showed that his work was still a refuge from all that made life disheartening and unintelligible. Whatever convictions had been thwarted or impaired in him, his faith in the importance of his task remained unshaken; and the firmness with which he held to it filled Justine with a sense of his strength.
The young man's importunity was really out of proportion to what he signified. "Mrs. Westmore has asked me to replace her," he said, putting his previous statement more concisely. "Then I am not to see her at all?" Amherst exclaimed; and the lawyer replied indifferently: "I am afraid not, as she leaves tomorrow." Mr. Tredegar was in his element when refusing a favour.
The rest shall be handed over to your mother, and I shall thus be relieved of all responsibility. Will that be satisfactory to you?" Mr. Westmore ceased, and held forth the envelope. Stephen had risen now and was standing erect. His hands remained clasped before him. "Take it," said the parson. "No," was the reply, "I cannot." "You cannot? It is yours!" "Yes, I know that.
Justine had said "Westmore must be foremost to you both," and he would prove that she was right spite of the powers leagued against him he would win over Bessy in the end! Those observers who had been struck by the length and animation of Miss Brent's talk with her host and among whom Mrs.
The infield around the judges' stand, and in front of the grand-stand, was thronged with surreys and buggies, and filled with ladies and their beaux. A ripple of excitement had gone up when Richard Travis drove up in a tally-ho. It was filled with gay gowns and alive with merriment and laughter, and though Alice Westmore was supposed to be on the driver's box with the owner, she was not there.
It touched even Richard Travis this decay. He had known the place in the days of its glory before its proprietor, Colonel Theodore Westmore, broken by the war, in spirit and in pocket, had sent a bullet into his brain and ended the bitter fight with debt.
"Of course we want to be up-to-date there's no reason why the Westmore mills shouldn't do as well by their people as any mills in the country," he affirmed, in the tone of the entertainer accustomed to say: "I want the thing done handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs. Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical vice in the system.
She too had her tasks at Westmore: the supervision of the hospital, the day nursery, the mothers' club, and the various other organizations whereby she and Amherst were trying to put some sort of social unity into the lives of the mill-hands; and when, on the day after his return from New York, she presented herself, as usual, at the Westmore office, where she was in the habit of holding a brief consultation with him before starting on her rounds, she was at once aware of a new tinge of constraint in his manner.
Word Of The Day