United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She fixed her eyes on the old man. "Father, George is dead!" Old Merton hung his head, and made no reply. That was enough. Susan crept from the room pale as ashes. She tottered, but she did not fall. She reached her room and locked herself in. MR. MEADOWS did not visit Grassmere for some days; the cruel one distrusted his own firmness. When he did come he came with a distinct purpose.
F. Rockridge Sewall a very elegant and perfectly poised woman she seemed to me the one time I had seen her at close range, as she sat at the head of the sumptuous table in the tapestry-hung dining-room at Grassmere. I admired Mrs. Sewall.
Grassmere Ruth's! Good heavens think of it! Think of the power in my hands, if only Ruth behaves, to pay back a few old scores. I only wish Breck was alive. She'd marry him now, I guess, with all this recognition. I wonder whatever she'll do with Grassmere anyhow." "Turn it into some sort of institution for making women independent human beings, I'll wager."
The stranger raised his hat, and inclining his head slightly, said, "Permit me to ask your name?" "Salome Owen. And yours, sir, is " "Ulpian Grey." For a few seconds neither spoke; but the man smiled, and the girl bit her under-lip and frowned. "Are you the miller's daughter?" "I am the miller's daughter; and you are the master of Grassmere."
All Monday forenoon Susan was very busy. There was bread to be baked and butter to be made. Mr. Eden must take some of each to Oxford. They would keep Grassmere in his mind a day or two longer; and besides they were wholesome and he was fond of them. Then there was his linen to be looked over, and buttons sewed on for the last time.
I couldn't manage it indefinitely; the time would come when all the finesse in the world would avail nothing. And come it did in the middle of the third summer. Breck refused to be cool and temperate that third summer. He insisted on all sorts of extravagances. He allowed me to monopolize him to the exclusion of every one else. He wouldn't be civil even to his mother's guests at Grassmere.
Pressing her feverish lips to the hand she admired so enthusiastically, Miss Dexter resumed her recital of what had occurred since her journey to London, and finally ended it with an account of her removal to 'Grassmere, and of the discovery of the miniatures that guided her to 'Solitude.
'This is for John Meadows' back, said he, 'and I will give it him before the girl he has stolen from my brother. If she takes a dog instead of a man, it shall be a beaten dog, says he." Meadows rang the bell. "Harness the mare to the four-wheeled chaise. You know what to do, Crawley." "Well, I can guess." "But first get him told that I am always at Grassmere at six o'clock."
But still he wheeled about the flame. Ere long matters took a very different turn. The tone of George's letters began to change. His repeated losses of bullocks and sheep were all recorded in his letters to Susan, and these letters were all read with eager anxiety by Meadows a day before they reached Grassmere.
"And what do you intend to do with yourself?" she inquired in that cold, unsympathetic way she assumes when she is angry. "I don't know, yet. There's a chance for all sorts of good things to come true," I replied lightly. "You've been out three years, you know," she reminded me icily. The Sewalls occupied their English estate for several seasons. Grassmere remained closed and barred.
Word Of The Day