Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
You know perfectly that, if I denounce you as a murderer, I can prove what I say; and as to my silence for so many years, I am able thoroughly to account for it. I shall give you no further warning. You know where my son is: if he is not in my house within two days, I shall have you arrested. I have made up my mind. "Lucretia Cairnedge. "Rising-Manor, July 15, 18 ."
I heard the men thundering at the hall-door. Lady Cairnedge turned as if she would herself go and open to them, but seeing me, she understood what I had done, and went back to the window. "Come here! Come to me here to the window!" she cried. John had been watching with a calm, determined look. He came and stood between us. "John," I said, "leave your mother to me."
I saw something, but it was no higher above the ground than myself. Terror seized me. I turned and rode back. "My stupid animal has bogged himself!" said lady Cairnedge quietly. Deep in the dark watery peat, as thick as porridge, her horse gave a fruitless plunge or two, and sank lower. "For God's sake," I cried, "get off! Your weight is sinking the poor animal! You will smother him!"
He looked hard at the address, changed countenance, and frowned very dark, but I could not read the frown. Then his face cleared a little; he opened, read, and handed the letter to me. Lady Cairnedge hoped Mr.
John's great-aunt, who left him the property, died in the house, possessed of a large number of jewels, many of them of great price both in themselves and because of their antiquity: not one of them was ever found. A report reached us long after, that lady Cairnedge was found dead in her bed in a hotel in the Tyrol. My uncles lived for many years on the old farm.
Loveliest of faces, may no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said what I must, and laid it where she will find it! "I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady Cairnedge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you?
Within six months she was engaged, but the engagement was broken off, and she went abroad, leaving him behind her. She married lord Cairnedge in Venice, and returned to England when John was nearly four, and seemed to have lost all memory of her. His stepfather was good to him, but died when he was about eight. His mother was very severe.
From this letter, Lady Cairnedge might surmise that her relations with her son were at least suspected. Within two hours came another message that she would send a close carriage to bring him home the next day. Then indeed were my uncle and I glad that we had come.
He had found perfect proof, not only that lady Cairnedge was John's step-mother, but that she had no authority over him or his property whatever. A long discussion took place in my uncles' study I have to shift the apostrophe of possession as to whether John ought to compel restitution of what she might have wrongfully spent or otherwise appropriated.
The next instant I saw the lady's countenance ghastly with terror, looking beyond me. I turned, but saw nothing, save that my uncle had disappeared. When I faced her again, only a shadow of her fright remained. I offered her my hand for she was John's mother, but she did not take it. She stood scanning me from head to foot. "I am lady Cairnedge," she said. "Where is my son?" I turned yet again.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking