United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Others, genuinely attracted by her beauty and her patience, paid real court to her heart; but all these fell far short of her ideal standard. With Harvey Kynaston it was different. She admired him as a thinker; she liked him as a man; and she felt from the first moment that no friend, since Alan died, had stirred her pulse so deeply as he did.
She recalled her interview with old Lady Kynaston at Walpole Lodge, when she had so nearly promised her to give back her hand to her eldest son, when she would have done so had it not been for that sight of Maurice's face in the adjoining room.
Lady Kynaston sat at her davenport with all the litter of her daily correspondence before her; her son stood up by the mantelpiece, leaning his back against it, and looked away out of window at the figures of Beatrice and his future wife sauntering up and down the garden walks. She could not well see his face as he spoke these last words.
Pryme and Miss Sophy Macpherson; her sister behind with Guy Miller; Beatrice, looking melancholy, with the curate in charge; and her mother last with Sir John, who had come over from Kynaston to dinner. Edwin Miller, the second son, by himself brought up the rear. There was some laughter at the expense of the three defaulters, who, of course, were supposed to have only just hurried downstairs.
Carefully as Vera confined herself to the house and garden for the next three days, she could not avoid going to church when Sunday came. And at church were Captain and Mrs. Kynaston. During the service she only saw his back, erect and broad-shouldered, in the seat in front of her, for the pews had been cleared away, and open sittings had been substituted all through the church.
Helen rang the bell for the tea. "Is that all you have to say to me?" she said, poutingly. Maurice Kynaston looked distressed. "Upon my word, Helen, I am sure I don't know what you expect. I haven't heard any particular news. I saw you only yesterday, you know. I don't know what you want me to say." Helen was silent.
And Kynaston, by contrast, appeared very fair, with its smooth lawns and its terrace walks, and its great desolate rooms, that she would so well understand how to fill with life and brightness; but Kynaston's master counted for very little to her. She knew the power of her own beauty so well.
"Why, little boy, who are you, and what do you want? Why, are you not Mr. Daintree's little boy?" "Yes." "Then what are you waiting for?" "I want to give a note to Captain Kynaston," said Tommy, crimson with confusion. "Is he ever coming in?" "He is in now; give me the note." "I was to give it to himself, to nobody else." "Who told you?" "Aunt Vera." "Oh!"
Women shall henceforth be the equals of men, not by levelling down, but by levelling up; not by fettering the man, but by elevating, emancipating, unshackling the woman. All this Herminia knew well. All these things she turned over in her mind by herself on the evening of the day when Harvey Kynaston came to tell her of his approaching marriage.
It is never easy for a man to put himself into a woman's place, or to enter into the extra sensitiveness of soul with which she is endowed. So it was that he agreed to go straight back to Kynaston, and to make the old house his permanent home according to his wife's wishes.
Word Of The Day