Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
"I have so many relations scattered over England, that fortunately not one of them can venture to calculate on my property if I die childless, and therefore not one of them can feel himself injured when, a few weeks hence, he shall read in the newspapers that Philip Derval is married.
"I can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval between Monsieur de Brissac, captain in the Bodyguards and d'Anjorrant. Not the pockmarked one. The other. The Beau d'Anjorrant as they called him. They met three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing..."
And now I come back to England with the intention of marrying, late in life though it be, and with such hopes of happiness as any matter-of-fact man may form. But my hope will not be at Derval Court. I shall reside either in London or its immediate neighbourhood, and seek to gather round me minds by which I can correct, if I cannot confide to them, the knowledge I myself have acquired."
The young man's conversation not only thus excites your fancies, it disturbs your affections. He speaks not only of drugs that renew youth, but of charms that secure love. You tremble for your Lilian while you hear him! And the brain thus tasked, the imagination thus inflamed, the heart thus agitated, you are presented to Sir Philip Derval, whose ghost your patient had supposed he saw weeks ago.
Among those who sought refuge in Guernsey there landed, not far from the Lion's Rock at Cobo, an English knight, Sir Hugh Brock, lately the keeper of the Castle of Derval in Brittany, a man "stout of figure and valiant of heart." This harbour of refuge was St. Peter's Port. "Within a long recess there lies a bay, An island shades it from the rolling sea, And forms a port."
And putting aside all other reasons for hesitating to believe that Margrave was the son of Louis Grayle, reasons which his own narrative might suggest, was it not strange that Sir Philip Derval, who had instituted inquiries so minute, and reported them in his memoir with so faithful a care, should not have discovered that a youth, attended by the same woman who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the town on the same night as Grayle himself disappeared?
But Derval had related truthfully, according to Margrave's account, the flight of Ayesha and her Indian servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not even to the existence of the boy, who must have been of no mean importance in the suite of Louis Grayle, if he were, indeed, the son whom Grayle had made his constant companion, and constituted his principal heir.
The next day Haroun summoned Sir Philip Derval, and said to him, "Depart to Damascus. In that city the Pestilence has appeared. Go thither thou, to heal and to save. In this casket are stored the surest antidotes to the poison of the plague. Of that essence, undiluted and pure, which tempts to the undue prolongation of soul in the prison of flesh, this casket contains not a drop.
And putting aside all other reasons for hesitating to believe that Margrave was the son of Louis Grayle, reasons which his own narrative might suggest, was it not strange that Sir Philip Derval, who had instituted inquiries so minute, and reported them in his memoir with so faithful a care, should not have discovered that a youth, attended by the same woman who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the town on the same night as Grayle himself disappeared?
I returned to my habitual duties and avocations with renewed energy; I did not suffer my thoughts to dwell on the dreary wonders that had haunted me, from the evening I first met Sir Philip Derval to the morning on which I had quitted the house of his heir; whether realities or hallucinations, no guess of mine could unravel such marvels, and no prudence of mine guard me against their repetition.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking