Tom Barksdale and Mabel were pacing the portico from end to end,

chatting with the cheerful familiarity of old friends. Catching some

of thin energetic sentence, Mabel looked over her shoulder.

"Who of us is fated to be pitied, did you say, Rosa dear?"

"Never yourself!" was the curt reply. "Rest content with that

assurance."

Her restless fingers began to gather the red leaves that already

variegated the foliage of the creeper shading the porch. Strangely

indisposed to answer her animadversions upon the world's judgment of

her sex, or to acknowledge the implied compliment to his betrothed,

Frederic watched the lithe, dark hands, as they overflowed with the

vermilion trophies of autumn. The September sunshine sifted through

the vines in patches upon the floor; the low laughter and blended

voices of the four talkers; the echo of Tom's manly tread, and

Mabel's lighter footfall, were all jocund music, befitting the

brightness of the day and world. What was the spell by which this

pettish girl who stood by him, her luminous eyes fixed in sardonic

melancholy upon the promenaders, while she rubbed the dying leaves

into atoms between her palms--had stamped scenes and sounds with

immortality, yet thrilled him with the indefinite sense of unreality

and dread one feels in scanning the lineaments of the beloved dead?

Had her nervous folly infected him? What absurd phantasy was hers,

and what his concern in her whims?

A stifled cry from Mabel aroused him to active attention. A

gentlemen had stepped from the house upon the piazza, and after

bending to kiss her, was shaking hands with her companions.

"The Grand Mogul!" muttered Rosa, with a comic grimace, and not

offering to stir in the direction of the stranger.

In another moment Mabel had led him up to her lover, and introduced,

in her pretty, ladylike way, and bravely enough, considering her

blushes, "Mr. Chilton" to "my brother, Mr. Winston Aylett."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024