Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They were evidently explaining the races to her, and she stood between them, a docile and charming vision, turning her graceful head from side to side. Falloden and his party crossed her actual line of sight. But she took no further notice; and he heard her laugh at something Radowitz was saying. "Oh, Mr. Falloden, is that you and Lady Laura! This is a pleasure!"
He saw that she danced twice with Radowitz, and that Falloden stood meanwhile in the doorway of the hall, twisting his black moustache, and chaffing Meyrick, yet all the time with an eye on the ballroom. And during one long disappearance, he found himself guessing that Falloden had taken her to the library for greater seclusion.
Send him with three or four men." "Yes at once. Shall I take a message to the house?" Radowitz spoke very gently. The red-gold of his hair, and his blue eyes, were all shining in the strange light. But he was again as pale as Falloden himself. Douglas drew out a pencil, and a letter from his pocket. He wrote some words on the envelope, and handed it to Radowitz. "That's for my mother's maid.
Radowitz danced the Polish dance with a number of steps and gestures unknown to an English ballroom, as he had learnt them in his childhood from a Polish dancing-mistress; Constance, with the instinct of her foreign training, adapted herself to him, and the result was enchanting.
I've only one hand." He pointed despairingly to the sling he was wearing. "Tell my son tell Douglas " But the faint voice ceased abruptly, and the eyes closed. Only there was a slight movement of the lips, which Radowitz, bending his ear to the mouth of the dying man, tried to interpret. He thought it said "pray," but he could not be sure. Radowitz looked round him in an anguish.
Two or three deep sobs escaped him involuntary, almost unconscious. Then he pulled himself together. His mother? Who was to tell her? He went to call Radowitz, who came eagerly. "My father is dead," said Falloden, deadly pale, but composed. "How long have you been here?" "About half an hour. When I arrived he was in agonies of pain. I gave him brandy, and he revived a little.
He seemed to her years older than he had been in May, and related, for the first time, to the practical every-day world. This absorption too in Otto Radowitz and his affairs incredible!
Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom the slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign youth dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them. Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano.
Loss and catastrophe might be at some distant time made good. But what could ever give Radowitz back his art his career his natural object in life? The hatches of the present had just got to be closed over this ugly, irreparable thing. "I can't undo it nothing can ever be undone.
"What on earth does it matter!" said Radowitz impatiently. "He is just a fool a young one the worst sort I can put up with the old ones. I know my own case a great deal better than he does." "Does he want you to stop working?"
Word Of The Day