Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
He was dressed as a court jester, and carried a wand which he flourished dramatically. He wore a close-fitting black mask. "There is certainly magic abroad," he declared, in a rich, Irish brogue that Lady Blythebury smiled to hear. For she also was Irish to the backbone. "You know something of the art yourself, Captain Sullivan?" she asked. She knew the man for a friend of her husband's.
Then, outwardly calm, she traversed the terrace and entered the house. Lady Blythebury was dancing, and she felt she could not wait. She scribbled a few hasty words of farewell, and gave them to a servant as she entered her carriage. Hers was the first departure, and no one noted it. She sank back at length, thankfully, in the darkness, and closed her eyes.
She had married him out of pique, it was true, but life with him had never seemed intolerable until he had shown her that he knew it. She took her invitation with her, and in her own room sat down to read it once again. It was from a near neighbour, Lady Blythebury, an acquaintance with whom she was more intimate than was Sir Roland. Lady Blythebury was a very lively person indeed.
"But it's the magic of a pretty woman that I'm after at the present moment. These masks, Lady Blythebury, are uncommon inconvenient. It's yourself that knows better than to wear one. Sure, beauty should never go veiled." Lady Blythebury laughed indulgently. Though she knew it for what it was, the fellow's blarney was good to hear. "Ah, go and dance!" she said. "I've heard all that before.
Lady Brooke had known her previous to her own marriage, and she clung to this friendship, notwithstanding Sir Roland's very obvious lack of sympathy. He knew Lord Blythebury in the hunting-field. Their properties adjoined, and it was inevitable that certain courtesies should be exchanged.
But he refused so steadily to fall a captive to Lady Blythebury's bow and spear, that he very speedily aroused her aversion. He soon realised that her influence over his wife was very far from benevolent towards himself, but, save that he persisted in declining all social invitations to Blythebury, he made no attempt to counteract the evil. In fact, it was not his custom to coerce her.
She came out of her meditations. "Not really well. Lady Blythebury and I are friends, but we do not visit very often." "And that but secretly," he laughed, "when the lion is absent?" She did not answer him, and he continued after a moment: "'Pon my life, the very mention of him seems to cast a cloud. Let us draw a magic circle, and exclude him!" He waved his wand. "You knew that I was a magician?"
Lady Blythebury had turned her husband's house into a fairy palace of delight. She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and ever-shifting scene which she had called into being. "I feel as if I had stepped into an Arabian Night," she laughed to one of her guests, who stood beside her.
She took up the invitation again and read it. It was to be a fancy-dress ball, and all were to wear masks. The waltz which she had learned to dance from Lady Blythebury herself and which was only just coming into vogue in England, was to be one of the greatest features of the evening. There would be no foolish formality, Lady Blythebury had assured her. The masks would preclude that.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking