United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There will be no keeping him down, for he seems possessed by the concentrated vim of this driving Yankee nation. Then he has a world of delusions besides that seem grand realities. Well, it is a sad thing to grow old and wise." Indeed it is, in Mr. Ludolph's style.
Dennis's color heightened a little, and his lips closed more firmly, but he gave no other sign that he heard this limitation of his hope and ambition. But it cut him rather deep. The best he could ever do, then, in her view, was to keep her dresses from being soiled. In the meantime Mr. Berder had shown great embarrassment at Mr. Ludolph's unexpected request.
She had hardly gone before he arose greatly refreshed and strengthened, but so famished that a roast ox would have seemed but a comfortable meal. His eye at once caught the sandwiches placed temptingly near. "That is Miss Ludolph's work," he said; "I wonder if she has saved any for herself." He was about to go and geek her when she met him with the coffee.
By their own belief their horizon was narrowed down to time and earth, and they could look for nothing beyond. In Mr. Ludolph's imperious, resolute nature, sickness always awakened anger as well as anxiety. It seemed like an enemy threatening his dearest hopes and most cherished ambition, therefore the heavy frown upon his brow as he pushed away the scarcely tasted breakfast.
He meant to have the matter settled at once. Picking up the muddy boots, he marched straight into Mr. Ludolph's office. That gentleman looked up, impatient at interruption, and saw his man-of-all-work standing before him with the splashed boots dangling in his hands. "'Well, what is it?" asked he, sharply. "Mr. Berder threw me those boots and told me to black them.
His beautiful collection, though in an unpretentious store, at last attracted attention, and after some little time it became the thing in the fashionable world to go there, and from that time forward his fortune was made. When his wife became a mother, there was a faint hope in Mr. Ludolph's heart that this event might awaken the woman within her, if aught of the true woman existed.
Ludolph's new home during the morning hours, and Christine's spell worked with bewildering and increasing power. While she tortured him with many doubts and fears, his hope grew to be almost a certainty that he had at last made a place for himself in her heart. Sometimes the whole story of his love trembled on his lips, but she never permitted its utterance.
As for Christine, she had one chance for life, one chance for heaven. She was young. Her nature had not so hardened and crystallized in evil as to be beyond new and happier influences. When Dennis entered Mr. Ludolph's store Christine was absent on a visit to New York. On her return she resumed her old routine. At this time she and her father were occupying a suite of rooms at a fashionable hotel.
The awful event he had witnessed seemed partially to paralyze him; for he knew that the oath, hot as the scorching flames, was scarcely uttered before Mr. Ludolph's lips were closed forever. He and his ambitious dream perished in a moment, and he was summoned to the other world to learn what his proud reason scoffed at in this.
It would not have surprised Ernst if the whole city had gone into mourning. Therefore the revelry at the Ludolph mansion seemed to him heartless and awful beyond measure, and nearly the first things he told Dennis on the latter's return was that they had had "a great dancing and drinking party, the night of the funeral, at Mr. Ludolph's."
Word Of The Day