Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: upon him ? Poor little Tempy, it was a girlish fancy; it would soon pass off. . . . It ought to have been easy enough to put such an unpleasant subject out of his mind now, with Charlie gone and no Tempy at hand to look reproach, and while so sweet an audience stood beside him ready to agree to every one of his conclusions. To Susy, indeed, the Colonel made very light of the whole affair. ' Didn't you know Charles Bolsover ? He has set up some absurd nonsense about Tempy. It is simply preposterous, and out of the question, and I told him so very plainly.' ' Oh ! John, didn't you give him any hope ?' said Susy, looking troubled. ' What the deuce should I give him any hope for ?' said the Colonel, testily. Then he softened again as he read the expression in Susy's eyes; it was not reproach, not even protest, but a sort of diffident sympathy, pity, bewilderment. ' Some day, when Tempy knows more of the world, when she realtses what sort of a fellow this is, she will be grateful to her old father,' said the Colonel; 'and she and you, Susy, will do me justice,' he added, with some reproach in his tone. 'We can do you justice now, John,' his wife answered, gravely, raising her eyes to his, and as she looked she saw his grave face brighten up. Perhaps a juster, less impressionable spirit might have made things less pleasant than Susy could bear to do. For, to tell the truth, though she tried to believe her colonel must be right, she could not forget the poor lover's stricken looks. Hers was not an uncompromising nature, and herein lay the secret weakness and the flaw in her true heart. Some harmonious spirit presided at her birth, and gifted her with qualities perhaps too well suited for this life, so that from her childhood she seemed to fall naturally into her plac...
|
