Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
It was pleasant to have a lady with him sometimes, and he wished so much it had been practicable for Ethelyn to have come. "Poor Ethie," he called her to himself, pitying her because, vain man that he was, he thought her so lonely without him.
"Dead," he said to himself many a time, and but for the dread of the hereafter, he, too, would gladly have lain down in the graveyard where Daisy was sleeping so quietly. With Andy it was different. Ethie was not dead he knew she was not and some time she would surely come back, There was comfort in Andy's strong assurance, and Richard always felt better after a talk with his hopeful brother.
Dr. Van Buren who at one time feared lest Ethelyn should faint, and who, as soon as an opportunity offered, whispered to her niece, "Do, Ethie, put some animation in your manner or people will think you an unwilling bride." For a moment a gleam of anger flashed from the eyes which looked unflinchingly into Mrs. Van Buren's, and the pale lips quivered with passion.
He had been very bold and strong in the cars and in the street; but here, in the deserted room, where Ethie used to be, and where something said she would never be again, he was weak as a girl, and leaned wholly upon Andy, who seemed to feel how much was depending upon him, and so kept up a cheery aspect while he kindled a fresh fire and cleared the ashes from the hearth by blowing them off upon the oilcloth; then, as the warmth began to make itself felt and the cold to diminish, he answered Richard's query.
"Aunt Barbara is here," Andy said, and then, with the same frightened, anxious look her face had so often worn during her illness, Ethie said: "Somebody else has sat by me and held my head and hands, and kissed me! Andy, tell me was that Richard? and did he kiss me, and is he glad to find me?" She was gazing fixedly at Andy, who replied: "Yes, Dick is here. He's glad to have you back.
Then, returning to his solitary rooms, he would sit nursing the demon which might so easily have been thrust aside. Ethie was not insensible to his kindness in allowing her to follow the bent of her own inclinations, even when it was so contrary to his own, and for his sake she did many things she might not otherwise have done.
She had chosen a life of celibacy because she preferred it, and found it a very smooth and pleasant one, especially after Ethie came and brought the sunshine of joyous childhood to her quiet home; but "those whom God had joined together" were bound to continue so, she firmly believed; and had Ethie come to her with her tale of sorrow, she would have listened kindly to it, poured in the balm of sympathy and love, and then, if possible, restored her to her husband.
Perhaps he blamed himself as he went over again the incidents of that fatal night when he kept Ethelyn from the masquerade; but if he did, no one was the wiser for it, and so the first long day wore on, and the night fell again upon the inmates of the farmhouse. The darkness was terrible to Richard, for it shut out from his view that strip of road which seemed to him a part of Ethie.
And Ethelyn tried to answer, but the great lumps were swelling in her throat, and so keen a pain was tugging at her heart that when at last, astonished at her silence, Richard said, "What is the matter, Ethie why don't you answer mother?" she burst out in a pitiful cry: "Oh, Richard, I can't, I can't; please take me back to Aunt Barbara."
At all events, she should know for a certainty by going to Davenport; and with every nerve stretched to its utmost tension, Ethie arose from her bed and packed her trunk quietly and quickly, and then going to the office, surprised the clerk with the announcement that she wished to leave on the ten-o'clock train.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking