United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I do not think the fault was all on one side, Miss Hethencourt," summed up the Captain, speaking in guttural consonant and flattened vowel from suppressed emotion. "The er the plaintiff must have approached the dog as he was chained and " "A bulldog," broke in Damaris, "is a magnet to the best in every human being.
She adored young things, and had an enormous family of godsons and goddaughters, out of which crowd Ben Kelham and Damaris Hethencourt were supreme favourites, and about whom she had been weaving plots when she had written her letter of invitation to the Squire.
Not Miss Coop; she was staying behind, of course, to have everything in readiness for Miss Hethencourt, who would doubtless be very tired and a little frightened. "There is nothing to fear," he added. "Nobody has ever really been lost in Egypt, and as Miss Hethencourt will not want a crowd of friends to meet her on her safe return, not one word shall be said about the little expedition of relief."
Fair-sized and square, it was made of fine white bars of ivory. The underside was also ivory, square and unblemished, and would have made an ideal hairpin-tray; it stood upon ebony feet inlaid with infinitesimal precious stones. "It has but just arrived, Miss Hethencourt," said the maître d'hôtel, who had been fluttering around upon the tiptoe of a most unusual curiosity.
". . . Well!" said the masculine voice, "I think it's damned hard lines on Miss Hethencourt, that's all; and a man wants a damned good hiding for being a knave as well as a fool."
The manager of the hotel salaamed deeply in the doorway before the high-born women, and showed no surprise at the tale which he believed, perhaps of Miss Hethencourt, who had gone to meet her grace and having undoubtedly mixed up instructions, had either gone up to Kulla to meet her, crossing her on the river, or had crossed to the other side, thinking, as her grace had suggested doing, that the return from Kulla would be made by camel on the far side of the Nile.
Damaris Hethencourt most certainly ought not to have been there, but you must perforce follow the path Fate has marked out for you, whether it leads through country lanes, or Piccadilly, or the Arab quarter of Cairo. The vendor of silks salaamed deeply before her beauty and the graciousness of her manner, for she smiled when she talked and spoke the prettiest broken Arabic in the world.
"You mind your own hedges, Maria Hobson, and see that your own cattle don't go a-straying, with their monkey tricks," she had said tartly and not over-lucidly, to her grace's maid, who had heard from someone who had heard from someone else that Miss Hethencourt was out at all hours of the night, here, there and everywhere.
"Well, all I can say is that I'm infernally sorry that Miss Hethencourt has been made the butt of gossip and scandal through a cad's behaviour, and I think that you and I ought to be shot for discussing her and her very intimate affairs. If " Damaris waited to hear no more.
She was a dream yet beside her beauty the pure loveliness of Damaris Hethencourt would have shown like the work of an Old Master beside a coarse copy. But what will you? Some like the snow-peaks and some the stretching plain; others the turbulent ocean, and yet others the farmyard with its rural sights and sounds. Thank goodness for it!
Word Of The Day