Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
By special train, by special boat, by aid of runners, telephone and telegraph, but above all by the magic of the Sheikh el-Umbar's name and his wife's unlimited distribution of gold, Olivia Duchess of Longacres and her maid and Jill el-Umbar and her maid arrived at the hotel on the night of the full moon.
It was a curious sensation, mixing again with the commonplace pleasure-seekers at Longacres, conscious that I was the repository of such extraordinary revelations. For, before we left our damp retreat, Irene had confided in me the secret history of her life. Not that I understood it very clearly, owing to her voice being continually choked by stifled emotion.
Later, a vision of loveliness, she walked down the dining-room behind the Duchess of Longacres, whilst continuous lamentations were wafted through the spring-doors from the spot where sat a dog with sticking-plaster across his nose and middle girt with a cummerbund of pink boracic lint.
Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood on the balcony of the hotel, looking down at the cortege which had escorted the wife of the Sheik el-Umbar from the House 'an Mahabbah some way out in the desert and which was making its way as best it could through the tortuous, narrow, unpaved streets of Khargegh town.
He salaamed and retired, leaving the duchess looking after him. She had her doubts about his belief in one word of the story. Wrapped in her ermine cloak and leaning on her ebony stick, Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood near all that is left of the Gate of To-morrow.
And Fate, having mislaid her glasses, worked her shuttle at hazard in and out of that picture of intricate pattern called Life, and having tangled and knotted together the crimson thread of passion, the golden thread of youth and the honest brown of a deep, undemonstrative love, she left the disentanglement of the muddle in the hands of Olivia, Duchess of Longacres. Her Grace was over eighty.
She now persisted that I had been designated by unerring proofs as that medium. She assured me that, months previously, she had foreseen my arrival at Longacres in the precise fashion in which it really took place. "Every detail," she said, "was exactly foreshadowed in the vision. I saw you gazing at me with what I fondly believed to be a look of mutual recognition.
Against the warnings of her heart and to the delight of her friends and family, she had married the Duke of Longacres, whose roving eye had been arrested by her beauty at a meet of the Devon and Somerset, and his equally roving heart temporarily captured by the indifference of her demeanour towards his autocratic self.
Then, from out of a first-class carriage of the train waiting to start for Southampton slowly descended Olivia, Duchess of Longacres. The girl and the alien had their backs turned to her, but the crowd had seen; had looked; started to laugh, and then had become silent, so great was the dignity of the old lady.
Maitland was pouring out tea quite undisturbed by this irregularity, for Longacres is a house where attendance at the meals is never compulsory. "And how have you slept?" she said, extending me a plump hand glittering with rings. "We were afraid that perhaps you were a little overtired last night, as you went off to bed in the middle of the singing. Capital, wasn't it? Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking