Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Ermentrude, her candid eyes now reproachful and suspicious, did not flinch as she took his hand it seemed to melt in hers but her farewell was conventional. In the street, before they seated themselves in their carriage, Mrs. Sheldam shook her head. "Oh, my dear! What a woman! What a man! I have such a story to tell you. No wonder you admire these people.
More than that, she had nothing with which to support it. Better be of the yeoman class like Ermentrude, and smile like a duchess granting favors. Or so she thought, poor girl, as her meek regard passed from the friend whose attractions she had thus acknowledged to the man whose approbation would make a goddess of her too.
She was even heard to rejoice that some Christian care and tenderness had at last reached her poor neglected child. It was well for Christina that she had such an ally. The poor child never crept down stairs to the dinner or supper, to fetch food for Ermentrude, or water for herself, without a trembling and shrinking of heart and nerves.
Ermentrude was eagerly presented with draughts by both father and brother, and presently Sir Eberhard exclaimed, turning towards the shrinking Christina with a rough laugh, "Maiden, I trow thou wilt not taste?" Christina shook her head, and framed a negative with her lips. "What's this?" asked her father, close to whom she sat. "Is't a fast-day?" There was a pause.
What the rest of the fellows may have done, I cannot say." "But he has brought thee something, Stina," continued Ermentrude. "Show it to her, brother." "My father sends you this for your care of my sister," said Eberhard, holding out a brooch that had doubtless fastened the band of the unfortunate wine-merchant's bonnet.
Sometimes the two girls would take the air, either, on still days, upon the battlements, where Ermentrude watched the Debateable Ford, and Christina gazed at the Danube and at Ulm; or they would find their way to a grassy nook on the mountain-side, where Christina gathered gentians and saxifrage, trying to teach her young lady that they were worth looking at, and sighing at the thought of Master Gottfried's wreath when she met with the asphodel seed-vessels.
Nay, as Ermentrude said, stroking his cheek, and smoothing the flaxen beard, that somehow had become much less rough and tangled than it used to be, "Some day wilt thou be another Good Freiherr Eberhard, whom all the country-side loved, and who gave bread at the castle-gate to all that hungered."
Sheldam trembled at the audacity of her niece whose irony was as much lost on her as it was on the poet. "But you publish plays and books, do you not?" Ermentrude naïvely asked. Madame Kéroulan interposed in icy tones: "Mademoiselle Adams misunderstands. Monsieur Kéroulan is the Grand Disdainer. Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarmé, he cares little for the Philistine public "
When Ermentrude heard her bees swarming, she stood outside her cottage and said this little charm over them: Christ, there is a swarm of bees outside, Fly hither, my little cattle, In blest peace, in God's protection, Come home safe and sound. Sit down, sit down, bee, St Mary commanded thee. Thou shalt not have leave, Thou shalt not fly to the wood. Thou shalt not escape me, Nor go away from me.
He certainly did not admire the little, slight, pale bower-maiden, but he seemed to look upon her like some strange, almost uncanny, wise spirit out of some other sphere, and his manner towards her had none of the offensive freedom apparent in even the old man's patronage. It was, as Ermentrude once said, laughing, almost as if he feared that she might do something to him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking