May Agnes Fleming

“ Lady Helena arose and took her in her arms, her face all blotted with a rain of tears.
"My child! my child!" she said, "it is hard on you—so young, so pretty, and only married yesterday! Edith, you frighten me! What are you made of? You look like a stone!"
The girl sighed—a long, weary, heart-sick sigh.
"I feel like a stone. I can't cry. I think I have no heart, no soul, no feeling, no conscience—that I am scarcely a human being. I am a hardened, callous wretch, for whom any fate is too good. Don't pity me, dear Lady Helena; don't waste one tear on me. I am not worth it." ”

“ There are griefs too deep for words, too intense for tears, when we can only sit in mute and stony despair, while the world reels under our feet, and the light of the sun is blackness. To Nathalie Marsh, the loss of fortune was the loss of everything—brother, lover, home, happiness—the loss of all to which she had looked forward so long, for which she had endured so much. And now, she sat there, like a figure carved in ebony; and only for the ghastly pallor of her face in the indistinct glimpses of it they could catch through the vail, could they tell that she even heard. ”

“ Wiseman, may my curse and the curse of Heaven cling to you like a garment of fire, now and forevermore, burning your miserable soul like a flame in this life, and consigning you to everlasting perdition in the next! May every torture and suffering that man can know follow the wronged orphan's curse! In this life I will be your deadliest enemy, and in the next I will bear witness against you at the throne of God! To your very grave, and beyond, my undying hatred and revenge for the wrong you have done me shall be yours; and now I wish you joy of your bride! ”

“ He sat alone in the prime salon, where the porcelain stove stood, with its handful of fire, looking gloomily out at the feathery flakes whirling through the leaden twilight. He turned round as she glided in, so unlike herself, so like a spirit, that his heart stood still.
"My love! my love!"
It was all he could say. He took her in his arms, so worn, so wasted, so sad; wan as the fluttering snow without. All his man's heart overflowed with infinite love and pity as he held that frail form in his strong clasp.
"Dear Everard, I have been so ill and so lonely; I wanted you so much!" ”

“ She broke into a short laugh that had a hard, metallic ring, and then her face darkened, blackened, and she ground the foot that crushed the rat fiercer, and with a sort of passionate vindictiveness, as if she had the head of the dwarf under her heel.
“I hate him! I hate him!” she said, through her clenched teeth and though her tone was scarcely above a whisper, it was so terrible in its fiery earnestness that Sir Norman thrilled with repulsion. “Yes, I hate him with all my heart and soul, and I wish to heaven I had him here, like this rat, to trample to death under my feet!” ”

“ Traces of Norine were everywhere; the piano in a corner, the centre-table littered with books, papers, magazines and scraps of needle-work, the two canaries singing in the sunny windows, all spoke of taste, and girlhood. There were white muslin curtains, crocheted tidies on every chair in the room, a lounge, covered with cretonne in a high state of glaze and gaudy coloring, and the scent of the hay fields and the lilacs over all. No fifth-avenue drawing-room, no satin-hung silver-gilt reception-room, had ever looked one half so exquisite in this metropolitan gentleman's professional eyes. ”

“ Dearest Maude, rouse yourself from this trance of despair, and remember our Erminie is in the hands of One who ‘doeth all for the best.’ He who noteth even the fall of a sparrow will protect our angel child.”
A shiver, a shadow, a fluttering of the heart, and that was all. No words came from the pale lips.
“Have faith, sweet wife, and trust in God. Overcome this selfish grief, and remember there still remain many for you to love—many who love you. Live for them, my own Maude; live for me; live for the heaven where our Erminie has gone.” ”

“ Georgia's high spirit only rose the higher; the keener the cold, the more piercing the blast, it only flashed a deeper crimson to her glowing cheeks and lips, and kindled a clearer light in her bright black eyes, and she bounded like a young antelope over the frozen ground, shouting with irrepressible life. Out amid the wildest winter storms you might see that small dark figure flying along with streaming hair, bending and dipping to the shrieking blast that could have whirled her light form away like a feather, flying over the icy ground that her feet hardly seemed to touch. ”

“ Every feeling of honor bade him fly from this intoxicating siren, whose power he felt growing stronger each moment over him; but the voice of passion cried: "Remain! love her, if you will! What right has Sibyl to stand between you and the heaven of your dreams?" And, like all who allow the struggle between right and wrong to wage its warfare in their bosom, Willard Drummond was lost. For, with his hot, fervid, Southern nature, worldly considerations, former vows, reason, principle, justice, even honor, were swept away, like a wall of smoke, before the fierce impetuosity of passion. ”

“ To be home once more—to be back in the cosy, common-place Russell square lodgings! If it were not for baby she feels as though she would like to run away, from Sir Victor and all, anywhere that Inez Catheron's black eyes and derisive smile could never come.
The September twilight, sparkling with frosty-looking stars, is settling down over the trees. The great house looms up, big, sombre, stately, a home to be proud of, yet Ethel shudders as she looks at it. The only miserable days of her life have been spent beneath its roof; she will hate it before long. ”

“ Dear Louis, forgive me if I have caused you pain. Believe me, it has grieved me deeply to be obliged to speak thus," she said, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking up pleadingly, sorrowfully, in his face.
"Oh! do not trouble yourself about grieving me, fair Celeste," he said, scornfully; "the glamour has faded from my eyes, that is all. I fancied you little less than an angel. I was fool enough to believe you loved me well enough to brave even the opinion of the world for my sake. I find you are only a woman, after all, with more pride and ambition than love for me. ”

“ I learned in the wilds of New Brunswick, where I fled to forget you, Kate, that that man was, what I knew he would be, a traitor and a villain. I only heard it two weeks ago, and I have never rested on my way to you since. I am a fool and a madman, perhaps, but I can't help hoping against hope. I love you so much, Kate, I have loved you so long, that I cannot give you up. He is false, but I will be true. I love you with all my heart and soul, better than I love my own life. Kate, don't send me away again. Reginald Stanford does not stand between us now. Think how I love you, and be my wife. ”

“ Oleander, in the face of freedom. And Hugh Ingelow was near, and she loved Hugh. Oh, if she had never refused him—bravest, noblest heart that ever beat! the most generous gentleman the Creator ever made!
Alone Mollie sat—alone, but lonely no longer; for yonder, drifting lazily into the setting tide, the sunset glowing above and around it, floated the snow-white skift. In the amber mist fluttered the banner of blue—the banner of hope—and there, lounging easily, with his face turned to her, was the man she loved, handsome Hugh! her beloved—her darling! ”

“ Heaven strengthen us all for that dread death-watch, when we sit beside those we love, and watch and wait for the soul to take its fight. No one spoke, except in hushed whispers, and the roaring of the wild storm sounded awfully loud in the stillness. They can hear the voice of the old priest as he reads, or talks, or prays with that fluttering spirit, already in the shadow of the valley of death. As the watch of Val points to eleven, Miss Rose glides softly out, with a face like snow, and tells them to kneel, while Father Lennard reads the prayers for the dying. ”

“ As Pet entered the sitting-room—for Miss Toosypegs dined in her sitting-room—her thin, dark, bright face all aglow with fun and frolic; her black eyes dancing and sparkling with insufferable light; her short, crisp, black curls all tangled and damp over her shoulders and round, polished, saucy, boyish forehead, she looked the very embodiment, the very incarnate spirit of mischief and mirth. She looked like a little grenade, all jets and sparkles—a little barrel of gunpowder, at any moment ready to explode—a wild, untamed little animal, very beautiful, but very dangerous. ”

“ The white hands removed the mask, and the floating coils of hair, and revealed, to Sir Norman's horror-struck gaze, the grisly face and head, and the hollow eye-sockets, the grinning mouth, and fleshless cheeks of a skeleton!
He saw it but for one fearful instant—the next, she had thrown up both arms, and leaped headlong into the loathly plague-pit. He saw her for a second or two, heaving and writhing in the putrid heap; and then the strong man reeled and fell with his face on the ground, not feigning, but sick unto death. ”

“ I would die sooner than offend you!"
"Die, then!" fairly shrieked the maddened man; "die, since your own lips have proclaimed your guilt!" And clutching her fiercely by the throat, he plunged the hidden knife into her side.
One piercing, terrific shriek, and she sank writhing, quivering at his feet in mortal agony. And the wretched maniac above her unable to speak, or move, or think, with distending eyeballs, glazing eyes—his ghastly face like that of the dead—his trembling hands red with her life-blood—stood rooted to the ground, caring not, feeling not the furious storm now. ”

“ It is her cousin and lover's favorite name for her, and it fits well. There is a certain barbaric splendor about her as she stands here in the firelight, in her trailing purple silk, in the cross of rubies and fine gold that burns on her bosom, in the yellow, perfumy rose in her hair, looking stately, and beautiful, and dreadfully out of temper.
The big, lonesome house is as still as a tomb. Outside the wind is rising, and the heavy patter, patter, of the rain-beats on the glass. That, and the light fall of the cinders in the polished grate, are the only sounds to be heard. ”

“ Kneeling there, with her face still turned to that luminous East, the blissful bride fell asleep; slept, and dreamed dreams as joyful as her waking thoughts, and no shadow of that sweeping cloud that was to blacken all her world so soon fell upon her.
Hours passed, and still Aileen slept. Then came an imperative knock at her door—again and again, louder each time; and then Aileen started up, fully awake. Her room was flooded with sunshine, and countless birds sang their glorias in the swaying green gloom of the branches, and the ceaseless sea was all a-glitter with sparkling sun-light. ”

“ I would lay down my life for you, my darling Mollie. That would be an easy sacrifice; it remains for me to make a greater one. A divorce shall set you free. I myself will obtain that divorce. No one knows of our marriage—no one ever shall know. I will leave you free—free as the wind that blows—to go forth and make happy a more honorable and deserving man. Only, Mollie, no man ever will love you as I love you! ”

“ Up and down the long drawing-room Aileen wandered, aimlessly, restlessly, oppressed with an overwhelming dread of, she knew not what, a prescience of evil, vague as it was terrible. The dark gloom of the rainy evening was not darker than that brooding shadow in her deep, dusky eyes.
In the library Colonel Jocyln stood facing his son-in-law elect, staring like a man bereft of his senses. The melancholy half light coming wanly through the oriel window by which he stood, fell full upon the face of Rupert Thetford, white and cold, and set as marble. ”

“ Why do you dislike Celeste so much?"
"I don't know. I never liked any one in my life—at least not more than one. Do you like her?" she said, lifting her eyes, glancing with dusky fire, to his face.
"Like her!" he exclaimed, shaking back his short, black curls, while his full, dark eye kindled—"like that lovely little creature! that gentle little dove! that sweet little fairy! beautiful as an angel! radiant as a poet's dream! bewitching as an Eastern houri! Like her! Oh, Minnette!" ”

“ Blake into the drawing-room of the cottage. Such a pretty drawing-room, lit by the rosy blaze of a clear coal-fire in a grate of shining steel, and pendent chandeliers of glittering glass and frosted silver. A small, high-ceilinged room, the walls hung with white and gold paperhangings, and adorned with perfect gems of art. The windows were draped in blue satin and white lace, and there was a Brussels carpet on the floor, where violets, and bluebells, and morning-glories ran wild on a white ground, and looked like pale spring flowers blooming in a snow bank. ”