Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
She held to that supporting thought, and during the rest of the evening she was untroubled by the instinctive knowledge that even the law cannot make right what the individual has made wrong. She was as light-hearted as a child that night, and Harboro, after the irksome restraints of the day, rejoiced in her.
"Upon my word, Johnny," Dalrymple had said to his friend, "he's a deuced good fellow, has really a good glass of claret, which is getting rarer and rarer every day, and will mount you for a day, whenever you please, down at Market Harboro'. Come and dine with them." Johnny Eames condescended, and did go and dine with Mr Dobbs Broughton.
And so Harboro and Sylvia went home to the house on the Quemado Road without knowing that the town had washed its hands of them. Harboro had made certain arrangements which were characteristic of him, perhaps, and which nobody knew anything about. For example, he had employed the most presentable Mexican woman he could find, to make the house homelike.
He would have to give his reasons. But when Harboro came down the stairs she knew instantly that she could not stop him from going. That quiet look was not unreadable now. It meant unswerving determination. He called to her, his hand outstretched; and when she went to him he kissed her. His voice was gentle and unshaken, in quite the habitual way, when he said: "I shall be back in a little while."
She knew, then, that he had spoken sarcastically, and that she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. "Oh, Harboro! You!" she cried. She had not known that he could be unkind. Her eyes swam in tears and she looked at him in agony. And in that moment it seemed to him that his heart must break. It was as if he looked on while Sylvia drowned, and could not put forth a hand to save her.
Yet she was looking away to the vibrating horizon, still as hot as an oven, as yearningly as if at any moment a knight might ride over the rim of the desert to rescue her, or as if a brother were coming to put an end to the existence of a Bluebeard who, obviously, did not exist. And then Harboro appeared not in the distance, but close at hand. He was passing Sylvia's gate.
Harboro adopted the plan, immediately after his marriage, of walking to his work in the morning and back to his home in the evening. It was only a matter of a mile or so, and if you kept out of the sun of midday, it was a pleasant enough form of exercise.
Harboro turned his horse so that he stood alongside the open carriage. He leaned over the wheel and shook hands with the General Manager. The encounter seemed to him to add the one desirable touch of familiarity to the night ride. He explained his presence away out on the Quemado Road; and the General Manager also explained. He had been spending the evening with friends on a near-by ranch.
And all this did not tend to make the bridge a popular promenade. But Harboro was not squeamish, nor did he entertain slavish thoughts of how people would feel over a disregarded custom. He liked simplicity, and moreover he felt the need of exercise now that his work kept him inactive most of the time. He was at an age when men take on flesh easily.
When the señor went up-stairs with scarcely a word to the señora, Antonia looked within, seeming to notice nothing. But to herself she was saying: "The time of ashes." The bustle of the domestic life was good at such a time. She brought in the roast. Harboro, with the keen senses of a healthy man who is hungry, knew that the roast had been placed on the table, but he did not stir.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking