Duchess

“ Monica makes no verbal answer, but a sigh of intensest satisfaction escapes her, and she turns up to his a lovely face full of youth and heaven and content. Her eyes are shining, her lips parted by a glad, tremulous smile. She is altogether so unconsciously sweet that it would be beyond the power of even a Sir Percivale to resist her.
"My heart of hearts!" says Desmond, in a low, impassioned tone.
Her smile changes. Without losing beauty, it loses something ethereal and gains a touch of earth. It is more pronounced; it is, in fact, amused. ”

“ With a sigh she quits her beloved garden, and wanders still! farther abroad into the deep woods that "have put their glory on," and are dressed in tender russets, and sad greens, and fading tints, that meet and melt into each other.
The dry leaves are falling, and lie crackling under foot. The daylight is fading, softly, imperceptibly, but surely. There is yet a glow from the departing sunlight, that, sinking lazily beyond the distant hills, tinges with gold the browning earth that in her shroud of leaves is lying.
But death, or pain, or sorrow, has no part with Clarissa to-day. ”

“ Even Lady Rodney for the moment has fallen a prey to her unpremeditated charms, and is leaning forward anxiously watching her. Jack and Sir Nicholas are enchanted.
The shadows close them in on every side. Only the firelight illumines the room, casting its most brilliant and ruddy rays upon its central figures, until they look like beings conjured up from the olden times, as they flit to and fro in the slow mysterious mazes of the dance.
Mona's waxen arms gleam like snow in the uncertain light. Each movement of hers is full of grace and verve. Her entire action is perfect. ”

“ Crosby had been a big boy then; he is a big man now, and, in spite of his adventurous wanderings by land and sea, looks younger than Wyndham, though he is actually four years older. A splendid man, bronzed, bearded, and broad-shouldered, with the grand look of one who has been through many a peril and many a fight, who has led a cleanly life, and can look the world in the face fearlessly. His eyes are large and blue, and full of life and gaiety. He has a heart as true as gold, and a strong right arm, good for the felling of a foe or the saving of a friend. ”

“ Lady Monkton, as if a little put out by the determined taciturnity of her manner, moves forward on her seat, and pulls the lace lappets of her dove-gray cap more over to the front impatiently. Long, soft lappets they are, falling from a gem of a little cap, made of priceless lace, and with a beautiful old face beneath to frame. A face like an old miniature; and as stern as most of them, but charming for all that and perfect in every line.
"Makes herself useful, no doubt," growls Miss L'Estrange from the opposite lounge, her evil old countenance glowing with the desire to offend. ”

“ Above in the clear sky the fleecy clouds assume each moment a new form—a yet more tender color—now pale blue, now gray, now a soft pink that verges upon crimson. Down far in the hollows a white mist is floating away, away, to the ocean, and there, too, can be seen (playing hide and seek amongst the great trunks of the giant elms) the flitting forms of the children dancing fantastically to and fro.
The scent of dying meadow-sweet is on the air, and the hush and the calm of evening.
"Dulce, command us to have tea out here," says Sir Mark, removing his cigarette from his lips for a moment. ”

“ From out the east faint rays of gold rushed tremulously, and, entering the casement, cast around Cecilia's head a tender halo.
When happiness lies within our grasp, when all that earth can give us (alas! how little!) is within our keeping, how good is the coming of another day,—a long, perfect day, in which to revel, and laugh, and sing, as though care were a thing unknown! But when trouble falls upon us, and this same terrible care is our only portion, with what horror, what heart-sinking, do we turn our faces from the light and wish with all the fervor of a vain wish that it were night! ”

“ Darling, darling, surely you love me, if only a little?"
"No, I do not love you," I answer, with downcast lids and flaming cheeks.
Silence falls upon my cruel words. His hand-clasp loosens, but still he does not let me altogether go; and, glancing up timidly, I see a face like and yet unlike the face I know—a face that is still and white, with lips that tremble slightly beneath the heavy fair mustache. A world of disappointed anguish darkens his blue eyes.
Seeing all this, and knowing myself its cause, my heart is touched and a keen pang darts through my breast. ”

“ Every day makes Mona dearer and more dear, her sweet and guileless nature being one calculated to create, with growing knowledge, an increasing admiration and tenderness. Indeed, each happy afternoon spent with her serves but to forge another link in the chain that binds him to her.
To-day is "so cool, so calm, so bright," that Geoffrey's heart grows glad within him as he walks along the road that leads to the farm, his gun upon his shoulder, his trusty dog at his heels.
All through the air the smell of heather, sweet and fragrant, reigns. ”

“ She might have said more, but that suddenly Marian Bethune stops her. The latter, who is leaning against the curtains of the window, breaks into a wild little laugh.
"Love—what is love?" cries she. "Oh, foolish Margaret! Do not listen to her, Tessie, do not listen."
She folds the soft silken curtains round her slender figure, and, hidden therein, still laughs aloud with a wild passion of mirth.
"It is you who are foolish," cries Margaret, with some agitation.
"I?" She lets the curtains go; they fall in a sweep behind her. She looks out at Margaret, still laughing. Her face is like ashes. ”

“ Now, in Monica's room Kit is standing by the open window gazing in rapt admiration at the dew spangled garden beneath. Like diamonds glitter the grass and the flowers beneath the kiss of the grass and the queen of night.
Moonbeams are playing in the roses, and nestling in the lilies, and rocking to and fro upon the bosom of the stream.
There is a peace unspeakable on all around. One holds one's breath and feels a longing painful in its intensity as one drinks in the beauty of the earth and sky. ”

“ But this is fated to be a night long remembered at Donaghmore. All her life long Honor will look back upon it with dread—will remember the deep anxiety, amounting to despair, that makes its black hours as they creep by seem like days in ordinary life.
It is a moonless night, and the wind, which has risen to a gale, fills the air with noises—the rattling of loosely-fastened shutters, the sough of the pine trees behind the house, the thousand-and-one eerie sounds that a high wind and night bring into empty rooms and corridors. ”

“ He only knew that she listened for a moment impassively, that the next time the cold blankness of her face was gone, that it was replaced by a look of scorn, incredulity, pity, contempt—he did not know what—that an instant later she had wrenched away the hand he had taken, had burst into a laugh that rang out shrilly in the gloom, and that he was standing alone, bewildered, thinking that her laugh had sounded like an echo of the laugh that he had heard last night in that mysterious house—the laugh of the gray-haired man with the scar upon his cheek. ”

“ The day has dawned, lived, grown to its full size, and then sunk, as we all must, into the arms of Death. The night has come, with sound of music and breath of dying flowers, and the drip, drip of the softly-flowing fountains.
The rooms are looking lovely; fair faces smile, and soft eyes gleam; and figures, round and svelte as Venus's own, sway with the music and mingle with the throng.
The ball is at its height, when Clarissa, seeing Dorian, beckons to him with her fan. ”

“ Luttrell, Mr. Luttrell," cries some one, "look up." And he does look up.
Above him, on the balcony, stands Molly, "a thing of beauty," fairer than any flower that grows beneath. Her eyes like twin stars are gleaming, deepening; her happy lips are parted; her hair drawn loosely back, shines like threads of living gold. Every feature is awake and full of life; every movement of her sweet body, clad in its white gown, proclaims a very joyousness of living. ”

“ Florence, after Dora has left her, sits motionless at her window. She has thrown open the casement, and now—the sleeves of her dressing-gown falling back from her bare rounded arms—leans out so that the descending night-dews fall like a benison upon her burning brow.
She is wrapped in melancholy; her whole soul is burdened with thoughts and regrets almost too heavy for her to support. She is harassed and perplexed on all sides, and her heart is sore for the loss of the love she once had deemed her own. ”

“ Once again I am in the ball-room at Strangemore, listening to a tale of early love. Is Sir Mark thinking of Marmaduke now, I wonder, and the story he then told me, of his old infatuation for his cousin Blanche? Was it more than an infatuation, a passing fancy? Was it an honest, lasting attachment? And have I secured but the tired, worn-out remnant of a once strong passion?
My changeful spirits, so prone to rise, so easy to dash to earth, again forsake me. Discontented and uncertain, I sit with lowered lids and fretful, puckered brow.
"Do you, then, think a man can love but once in his life?" ”

“ A curious shade, difficult, perhaps, to wear with good effect; but on Lady Swansdown it seems to reign alone as queen of all the toilets in the rooms to-night. She looks, indeed, like a perfect picture stepped down from its canvas, "a thing of beauty," a very vision of delight.
She seems, indeed, to Joyce watching her—Joyce who likes her—that she has grown beyond herself (or rather into her own real self) to-night. There is a touch of life, of passionate joy, of abandonment, of hope that has yet a sting in it, in all her air, that, though not understood of the girl, is still apparent. ”

“ And Sir Guy drives away full of his ward's fresh girlish loveliness, her slender lissome figure, her laughing face, the thousand tantalizing graces that go to make her what she is; forgetful of Miss Beauchamp's more matured charms,—her white gown,—her honeyed words,—everything.
All day long Lilian's image follows him. It is beside him in the crowded street, enters his club with him, haunts him in his business, laughs at him in his most serious moods; while she, at home, scarce thinks of him at all, or at the most vaguely, though when at five he does return she is the first to greet him. ”

“ Geoffrey and Mona go up the road with the serenader behind them, and, turning aside, she guiding, mount a stile, and, striking across a field, make straight for the high hill that conceals the ocean from the farm. Over many fields they travel, until at length they reach the mountain's summit and gaze down upon the beauteous scene below.
The very air is still. There is no sound, no motion, save the coming and going of their own breath as it rises quickly from their hearts, filled full of passionate admiration for the loveliness before them. ”

“ Tita, flinging open the little rustic gate that opens a way to these woods, hastens through it as though all the furies are at her back, and never ceases running until she finds herself a good half-mile from home.
And now she throws herself upon a sort mossy bank, and, clasping her hands in front of her, gives herself up to thought. Most women when in grief make direct for their bedrooms; Tita, a mere child of Nature, has turned to her mother in her great extremity. Her heart seems on fire, her eyes dry and burning. Her quick, angry run has left her tired and panting, and like one at bay. ”

“ The ivy creeping up the ancient walls of the castle is rustling and whispering as the evening breeze sweeps over it. High up the tendrils climb, past mullioned windows and quaint devices, until they reach even to the old tower, and twine lovingly round it, and push through the long apertures in the masonry of the walls of the haunted chamber.
It is here that the shadows cast their heaviest gloom. All this corner of the old tower is wrapped in darkness, as though to obscure the scene of terrible crimes of past centuries. ”

“ In an upper chamber, through the closed blinds of which the sun is vainly striving to enter, Reginald Branscombe, fifth Earl of Sartoris, lies dead. The sheet is reverently drawn across the motionless limbs; the once restless, now quiet, face is hidden; all around is wrapt in solemn unutterable silence,—the silence that belongs to death alone!
A sense of oppressive calm is upon everything,—a feeling of loneliness, vague and shadowy. The clock has ticked its last an hour ago, and now stands useless in its place. The world without moves on unheeding; the world within knows time no more! ”

“ Every one grows very silent. It is as though a spell has fallen upon them all; all, that is, except Dulce. She, rising hurriedly from her seat, goes toward the stranger.
"It is Roger!" she cries suddenly, in so glad a voice, in a voice so full of delight and intense thankfulness, that every one is struck by it.
Then Roger is in their midst, a very sunburnt Roger, but just at first his eyes are only upon Dulce, and after a little bit it becomes apparent to everybody that it is Dulce alone he sees; and that she is in fact the proud possessor of all the sight he owns. ”

“ Blanche Going raises her head and regards him fixedly. In the velvet softness of her dark eyes shines for an instant an expression that is half reproach, half passionate anger; only for an instant; then turning her glance on me, she meets my gaze full, and sneers unmistakably. I feel radiant, triumphant. At least I have it in my power to give her sting for sting.
"Thank you," I say to Sir Mark, with a beaming smile. "I shall feel quite safe and happy in my mind with you. At heart I believe I am a coward, so feel it pleasant to know there will be help at hand if the ponies prove refractory." ”

“ When you first came to Herst for your own amusement, to pass away the hours that perhaps hung a little heavily upon your hands, or to rouse a feeling of jealousy in the heart of Luttrell, or to prove the power you have over all men by the right of your fatal beauty, you played off upon me all the pretty airs and graces, all the sweet looks and tender words, that come so easy to you, never caring what torment I might have to endure when your dainty pastime had palled upon you. ”

“ Sitting now in her bedroom, forlorn and desolate, with the cruel words that have traveled all the way across a continent to slay her peace throbbing through her brain, she hears Cyril's well-known step upon the gravel outside, and, springing to her feet as though stabbed, shrinks backward until the wall yields her a support. A second later, ashamed of her own weakness, she straightens herself, smooths back her ruffled hair from her forehead, and, with a heavy sigh and colorless face, walks down-stairs to him who from henceforth must be no more counted as a lover. ”

“ A smile, as coy as it is tender, curves her dainty lips, as she lifts to his two, soft, dewy eyes, in which the light of a first love has at last been fully kindled. She comes a step nearer to him, still smiling,—a lovely thing round which the moonbeams riot as though in ecstasy over her perfect fairness,—and then in another instant they are both in heaven, "in paradise in one another's arms!" ”

“ The heat has made her pale and languid; but just at this moment a faint delicate color springs into her face; and as the figure of a young man, tall and broad-shouldered, turns the corner of the road, she raises her hand to her cheek with a swift involuntary gesture. A moment later, as the figure comes closer, so near that the face is discernible, she pales again, and grows white as an early snow drop.
"Good-morning, Ruth," says Dorian Branscombe, with a smile, apparently oblivious of the fact that morning has given place to noon many hours agone. ”