United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I made no answer to this ungracious speech, but Alma was all excitement. "So this is Castle Raa! What a fascinating old place!" she said, and as we drove through the park she reached out of the car to catch a first glimpse of the broad terraces and winding ways to the sea which had been reflected in her memory since she was a child. I felt no such anxiety.

Somewhere towards the dead reaches of the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwards the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possession of his inheritance.

"But he is coming to Castle Raa," I said, "and I am to see him to-morrow night." "That too! The young scoundrel!" I explained that my husband had invited him, being prompted to do so by the other woman. "Worse and worse!" cried Father Dan. "Don't you see that they're laying a trap for you, and like two young fools you're walking directly into it. But no matter! You mustn't go."

My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night Why had I left her behind me?

A six-foot man is a commonplace. The king, Raa Kook, is at least six inches above six feet, and though he would weigh fully three hundred pounds, is so equitably proportioned that one could not call him fat. Many of his chiefs are as large, while the women are not much smaller than the men.

I brood neither over past nor future. I am careless, improvident, uncautious, happy out of sheer well-being and overplus of physical energy. Fish, fruits, vegetables, and seaweed a full stomach and I am content. I am high in place with Raa Kook, than whom none is higher, not even Abba Taak, who is highest over the priest. No man dare lift hand or weapon to me.

The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever, congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that the object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become the heir of Castle Raa.

It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly bad husband I had no right to be there. It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife I had no right to be there. Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, with the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture.

It had belonged to the head of the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing. But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his eyes with his ragged sleeve and said: "Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a man, and then nobody shall never lash you."

"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?" "What peeress?" "Don't you remember the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?" "Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now." "Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ." "Ah, well, that's the way, you see." The long night passed.