The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ make home-like in such ways as I know your taste lies. My lord has aided me to choose romances for your shelves, he knowing more of books than I do. And I shall not dress thee out like a peacock with gay colours and great farthingales. They would frighten thee, poor woman, and be a burden with their weight. I have chosen such things as are not too splendid, but will suit thy pale face and shot partridge eyes.”

      Anne stood in the middle of her room and looked about at its comforts, wondering.

      “Sister,” she said, “why are you so good to me? What have I done to serve you? Why is it Anne instead of Barbara you are so gracious to?”

      “Perchance because I am a vain woman and would be worshipped as you worship me.”

      “But you are always worshipped,” Anne faltered.

      “Ay, by men!” said Clorinda, mocking; “but not by women. And it may be that my pride is so high that I must be worshipped by a woman too. You would always love me, sister Anne. If you saw me break the law—if you saw me stab the man I hated to the heart, you would think it must be pardoned to me.”

      She laughed, and yet her voice was such that Anne lost her breath and caught at it again.

      “Ay, I should love you, sister!” she cried. “Even then I could not but love you. I should know you could not strike so an innocent creature, and that to be so hated he must have been worthy of hate. You—are not like other women, sister Clorinda; but you could not be base—for you have a great heart.”

      Clorinda put her hand to her side and laughed again, but with less mocking in her laughter.

      “What do you know of my heart, Anne?” she said. “Till late I did not know it beat, myself. My lord says’tis a great one and noble, but I know ’tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him, Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain—as fair as an honest man, and not a puling, slippery woman?”

      “You have been a great lady,” Anne answered, her great dull, soft eyes filling with slow tears as she gazed at her. “He says that you have given to him a year of Heaven, and that you seem to him like some archangel—for the lower angels seem not high enough to set beside you.”

      “’Tis as I said—’tis his heart that is noble,” said Clorinda. “But I vowed it should be so. He paid—he paid!”

      The country saw her lord’s happiness as the town had done, and wondered at it no less. The manor was thrown open, and guests came down from town; great dinners and balls being given, at which all the country saw the mistress reign at her consort’s side with such a grace as no lady ever had worn before. Sir Jeoffry, appearing at these assemblies, was so amazed that he forgot to muddle himself with drink, in gazing at his daughter and following her in all her movements.

      “Look at her!” he said to his old boon companions and hers, who were as much awed as he. “Lord! who would think she was the strapping, handsome shrew that swore, and sang men’s songs to us, and rode to the hunt in breeches.”

      He was awed at the thought of paying fatherly visits to her house, and would have kept away, but that she was kind to him in the way he was best able to understand.

      “I am country-bred, and have not the manners of your town men, my lady,” he said to her, as he sat with her alone on one of the first mornings he spent with her in her private apartment. “I am used to rap out an oath or an ill-mannered word when it comes to me. Dunstanwolde has weaned you of hearing such things—and I am too old a dog to change.”

      “Wouldst have thought I was too old to change,” answered she, “but I was not. Did I not tell thee I would be a great lady? There is naught a man or woman cannot learn who hath the wit.”

      “Thou hadst it, Clo,” said Sir Jeoffry, gazing at her with a sort of slow wonder. “Thou hadst it. If thou hadst not—!” He paused, and shook his head, and there was a rough emotion in his coarse face. “I was not the man to have made aught but a baggage of thee, Clo. I taught thee naught decent, and thou never heard or saw aught to teach thee. Damn me!” almost with moisture in his eyes, “if I know what kept thee from going to ruin before thou wert fifteen.”

      She sat and watched him steadily.

      “Nor I,” quoth she, in answer. “Nor I—but here thou seest me, Dad—an earl’s lady, sitting before thee.”

      “’Twas thy wit,” said he, still moved, and fairly maudlin. “’Twas thy wit and thy devil’s will!”

      “Ay,” she answered, “’twas they—my wit and my devil’s will!”

      She rode to the hunt with him as she had been wont to do, but she wore the latest fashion in hunting habit and coat; and though ’twould not have been possible for her to sit her horse better than of old, or to take hedges and ditches with greater daring and spirit, yet in some way every man who rode with her felt that ’twas a great lady who led the field. The horse she rode was a fierce, beauteous devil of a beast which Sir Jeoffry himself would scarce have mounted even in his younger days; but she carried her loaded whip, and she sat upon the brute as if she scarcely felt its temper, and held it with a wrist of steel.

      My Lord Dunstanwolde did not hunt this season. He had never been greatly fond of the sport, and at this time was a little ailing, but he would not let his lady give up her pleasure because he could not join it.

      “Nay,” he said, “’tis not for the queen of the hunting-field to stay at home to nurse an old man’s aches. My pride would not let it be so. Your father will attend you. Go—and lead them all, my dear.”

      In the field appeared Sir John Oxon, who for a brief visit was at Eldershawe. He rode close to my lady, though she had naught to say to him after her first greetings of civility. He looked not as fresh and glowing with youth as had been his wont only a year ago. His reckless wildness of life and his town debaucheries had at last touched his bloom, perhaps. He had a haggard look at moments when his countenance was not lighted by excitement. ’Twas whispered that he was deep enough in debt to be greatly straitened, and that his marriage having come to naught his creditors were besetting him without mercy. This and more than this, no one knew so well as my Lady Dunstanwolde; but of a certainty she had little pity for his evil case, if one might judge by her face, when in the course of the running he took a hedge behind her, and pressing his horse, came up by her side and spoke.

      “Clorinda,” he began breathlessly, through set teeth.

      She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain the pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.

      “‘Your ladyship!’” she corrected his audacity. “Or—‘my Lady Dunstanwolde.’”

      “There was a time”—he said.

      “This morning,” she said, “I found a letter in a casket in my closet. I do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew him.”

      “You did not,” he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.

      “The letter lies in ashes on the hearth,” she said. “’Twas burned unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the madman and the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde.”

      “‘The wife!’” he answered. “‘My lord!’ ’Tis a new game this, and well played, by God!”

      She СКАЧАТЬ