Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
The more I saw of the Other One, the more I found myself accepting Hopkins' judgment of her. Yes, her behaviour, living and dead, proved that she was not "a good sort." My eyes were still on the flames when a sound from Mrs. Vanderbridge half a sigh, half a sob made me turn quickly and look up at her. "But this isn't his handwriting," she said in a puzzled tone.
Vanderbridge asked me to empty an old desk in one of the upstairs rooms. "I am sending all the furniture in that room away," she said, "it was bought in a bad period, and I want to clear it out and make room for the lovely things we picked up in Italy. There is nothing in the desk worth saving except some old letters from Mr. Vanderbridge's mother before her marriage."
What he had done in those long evenings when he sat alone here it was beyond me to imagine. Was it any wonder that the brooding should have permanently unbalanced his mind? At the end of an hour I had sorted and filed the papers, with the intention of asking Mrs. Vanderbridge if she wished me to destroy the ones that seemed to be unimportant.
Then one evening she the Other One, I mean comes back again, just as she did tonight, just as she did last summer, and it all begins over from the beginning." "But can't they keep her out the Other One? Why do they let her in?" "Mrs. Vanderbridge tries hard. She tries all she can every minute. You saw her tonight?" "And Mr. Vanderbridge? Can't he help her?"
"Do they dine out often?" I asked. "They used to, but since Mr. Vanderbridge hasn't been so well, Mrs. Vanderbridge doesn't like to go without him. She only went tonight because he begged her to." She had barely finished speaking when the door opened, and Mr. Vanderbridge came in and sat down in one of the big velvet chairs before the wood fire.
I could feel it, vague and dark, while we talked about the war and the remote possibilities of peace in the spring. Mrs. Vanderbridge looked young and lovely in her gown of white satin with pearls on her bosom, but her violet eyes were almost black in the candlelight, and I had a curious feeling that this blackness was the colour of thought.
It was as if the visible form were only a spiral of grey smoke covering a sinister purpose. "The only way," said Mrs. Vanderbridge, "is to fight fairly even when one fights evil." Her voice was like a bell, and as she spoke, she rose from the couch and stood there in her glowing beauty confronting the pale ghost of the past.
Vanderbridge and this unknown evil that threatened her. In the morning Mrs. Vanderbridge went out shopping, and I did not see her until the evening, when she passed me on the staircase as she was going out to dinner and the opera. She was radiant in blue velvet, with diamonds in her hair and at her throat, and I wondered again how any one so lovely could ever be troubled.
In those dreadful days I think that even Mr. Vanderbridge hadn't a suspicion of the truth. The past was with him so constantly he was so steeped in the memories of it that the present was scarcely more than a dream to him. It was, you see, a reversal of the natural order of things; the thought had become more vivid to his perceptions than any object.
Then, while Mr. Vanderbridge rose, with a start of fear, and came towards her, she bent quickly, and flung the letters into the fire. When he would have stooped to gather the unburned pages, her lovely flowing body curved between his hands and the flames; and so transparent, so ethereal she looked, that I saw or imagined that I saw the firelight shine through her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking