United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"How is Major Clowes?" "Very queer. I took it on myself to send for the doctor, but he was out: but they sent word that he'd step round as soon as he came in. I'd have liked to catch Mr. Val, but he slipped off while I was waiting on the Major." "But Major Clowes isn't ill?" "Oh no, sir. But I don't care for so much responsibility." "Shall I have a look at him?"
But he knew men and things pretty well, and at a moment when Laura was speaking to Isabel he looked straight at Lawrence and touched his glass with a murmured, "Go slow, old man." The elder man had seen instantly what neither Mrs. Clowes nor Isabel had any notion of, that under his easy manner Hyde's nerves were all on edge.
For it was love still, the old inexplicable fascination: in the middle of one of his tirades, when he was at his most wayward, she would lose herself in the contemplation of some small physical trait, the scar of a burn on his wrist or the tiny trefoil-shaped birthmark on his temple, as if that summed up for her the essence of his personality, and were more truly Bernard Clowes then his intemperate insignificance of speech. . . . Even when others suffered for it she yielded to Bernard, because she loved him and because he suffered so infinitely worse than they.
"O Rose! if he's anything like nice, which is almost past praying for in Major Clowes' cousin, let's beguile him into the gooseberry bushes and make him tell us all about it! Val is very dear to his family, but no one, however tenderly attached to him, could call him a brilliant raconteur. Now Mr. Hyde won't have any modest scruples. Val, if there is a slug in that lettuce I wish you would say so.
Clowes," said Val shortly, and colouring all over his face. Fling enough mud and some of it is sure to stick! If his unworldly father could think Laura, though innocent, so far compromised that Isabel was not safe in her care, what were other people saying? Val got up. "I shall walk down and smoke a pipe with Clowes. He won't go to bed till they come in."
She released Val soon and hugged Laura Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile, wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments when he hated Isabel. Was she never going to grow up? Not at present, apparently. "What must I wear, Laura? Do people wear evening dress? Where shall we sit?
In this latter desire the girl secured but a brief postponement, for she was not long returned when the knocker summoned her to the front door, and on the steps stood the commissary and two soldiers laden with a basket apiece. "Ye see I'm true to my word, Miss Meredith," said Lord Clowes.
The match had resulted in an absurdly easy victory for the visitors by over forty points. Clowes had scored five tries off his own bat, and Trevor, if he had not fed his wing so conscientiously, would probably have scored an equal number. As it was, he had got through twice, and also dropped a goal. The two were now having a late tea with Allardyce in his study.
Knaves go to make up a complete pack as much as kings, you know," he finished, as Lord Clowes entered the room. Cornwallis returned at nightfall, with word of the junction of reinforcements; but, despite the news, it required all the urgence of himself and Clowes to induce the commander-in-chief to give the marching order for the next morning.
She thought her brother must be tired, and perhaps it really was the long day without food that made him so restless in mind and so uneasy. Bernard Clowes had been more than usually cranky that afternoon.
Word Of The Day