Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
Winnington stayed on into the lamplight, and presently began to read aloud. The scene became intimate and domestic. Delia very silent, sat in a deep arm chair, some pretence at needlework on her knee, but in reality doing nothing but look into the fire, and listen to Winnington's voice.
The best of the sages and wits of the day were to be met in Sam Winnington's house; the best of the sages and wits of the day thought Clary a fine woman, though a little lofty, and Sam a good fellow, an honest chum, a delightful companion, and at the same time the prince of portrait-painters. What an eye he had! what a touch!
And that being so, her confession would simply hand Gertrude over to Winnington's conscience. And Mark Winnington's conscience was a thing to fear. And yet the yearning to go to him like the yearning of an unhappy child was so strong. Traitor! yes, traitor! double-dyed.
Meanwhile Susy and Winnington were deep in conversation very technical much of it about a host of subjects they seemed to have in common. Delia silent and rather restless, watched them both, the girl's sweet, already faded, face, and Winnington's expression. When they emerged from the cottage Susy said shyly to Delia "Won't you come to tea with me some day next week?" "Thank you. I should like to.
Winnington's grey eyes fixed on the trees outside shewed a man trying to retrace his own course. "He wrote me a very touching letter. And I have always thought that men and women ought to be ready to do this kind of service for each other. I should have felt a beast if I had said No, at once. But I confess now that I have seen Miss Delia, I don't know whether I can do the slightest good."
If she was a nuisance, she was at least a fairly profitable nuisance. Winnington duly arrived at luncheon. The two ladies appeared to him as usual Gertrude Marvell, self-possessed and quietly gay, ready to handle politics or books, on so light a note, that Winnington's acute recollection of her, as the haranguing fury on the Latchford waggon, began to seem absurd even to himself.
Clary sat fanning herself, and casting knots on her pocket-handkerchief, and glancing quickly at Sam Winnington's gloomy, dogged face, so different from the little man's wonted bland, animated countenance. What on earth could make Sam Winnington take the wilful deed so much to heart?
She would have given everything she possessed to them, keeping the merest pittance for herself, if fate and domestic tyranny had allowed. No! but it hurt her unreasonably, foolishly hurt her that she must prepare herself again to face the look of troubled amazement in Mark Winnington's eyes, without being able to justify herself to herself, so convincingly as she would have liked to do.
"There you see their freemasonry. I don't suppose they approve his morals but he supports their politics. You won't be able to banish him! Well, so the child is lovely? and interesting?" Winnington assented warmly. "But determined to make herself a nuisance to you? Hm! Mr. Mark dear Mr. Mark don't fall in love with her!" Winnington's expression altered. He did not answer for a moment.
She locked up the cheque in a drawer of her writing-table. Winnington's horse passed the window, and he rose to go. She accompanied him to the hall door and waved a light farewell. Winnington's response was ceremonious. A sure instinct told him to shew no further softness. His dilemma was getting worse and worse, and Lady Tonbridge had been no use to him whatever.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking