zeturf commentary

zeturf commentary ON THE BRINK OF ETERNITY. "I will inform you in a few minutes," replied Lady Meg. "But first tell me if you have found out anything likely to reveal the truth.",A brown water-spaniel waddled from the woodshed into the room, four bright-eyed puppies at her heels, and stood half in the glow, half in the shadow, short tail ingratiatingly awag.,"It is a small black pebble of a peculiar shape," explained the girl, "and it was brought from Africa to Barbadoes over a hundred years ago. The negroes believe that a spirit dwells in this stone, and that when it is worshiped the indwelling devil can work woe to those against whom the possessor of the stone bears malice. You can have no idea how this talisman is venerated by all the blacks; they will go miles to look on it, to adore it; they would burn down a city to possess it; to gain it they would murder a hundred human beings. Well, Dr. Etwald was in Barbadoes some years ago, and he gained possession of this Voodoo stone. He has used it while here to intimidate Dido. While he holds it she will not dare to disobey him, and all this plotting and assassination designed to bring about my marriage with Dr. Etwald, has been designed by him, and carried out by Dido, solely on account of his ownership of the Voodoo stone. You know that she calls him the 'great master!' Well--now you can guess the reason for her service worship of this man.",The Aurora had hauled in to her berth; the crew were busy in unbending her sails. The Minorca lay close enough to establish a contrast, and everybody would have admitted that if the barque was a smart ship for her time, the three-masted schooner built by the Americans was as shapely a fabric as the gracefullest then afloat. The Admiral and the ladies paused before her on their way to the Minorca, which lay further on. They would not go on board; there was too much confusion. The captain, however, stumping the quarterdeck and shouting orders, saw and recognised them. He was a thick-set man, [Pg 92]brick-red in complexion, with deep-red greasy hair, ear-rings, brown eyes, and a mouth that through some injury was drawn a little way up into his left cheek. He came to the bulwark-rail with his hat in his hand, and as the Admiral and the ladies stepped to the quay-side to speak to him, he exclaimed: "Happy to see you, ma'am. And my hearty respects to you, Miss, and I hope that Admiral Lawrence is none the worse for remaining ashore.","You are slightly nonsensical when on the subject of Mona," says Sir Nicholas, with a shrug. "Intrigue and she could not exist in the same atmosphere. She is to Lauderdale what she is to everyone else,—gay, bright, and utterly wanting in self-conceit. I cannot understand how it is that you alone refuse to acknowledge her charms. To me she is like a little soft sunbeam floating here and there and falling into the hearts of those around her, carrying light, and joy, and laughter, and merry music with her as she goes."，"Of the Norfolk Fellowes?" enquired Captain Acton, after bows and smiles had been exchanged.，"As monitor, you mean?" responded the other, opening a locker near by and beginning to assemble her implements from a jumble of all sorts of odds and ends with which the locker was overflowing. "As merely monitor she sees that the models are posed, gets the numbers ready for us to draw when there is a new model, sees to it that we don't riot too loudly through the pose, takes any complaints we may have to make, to the powers above. But as guardian angel of the class, she soars far above our low conception of duty and propriety. Phew! Wait till you see her at it." Here her speech was lost while she delved head first into the welter.，"What?" Billy could scarcely believe his ears."For a day or two only, madam," he answered, with his face flushed with disappointment, for he had hoped his candour would have produced a very different effect. "But I may tell you frankly that Mr Eagle and[Pg 256] the crew know that you are on board, and I should have played my part ill had I not provided that nothing you can say, no entreaties that you can make, will persuade them that your elopement is not voluntary."

Her blood heated by her swift run grows cold again as this thought comes to her,—forced to the front by the fact that "all the air a solemn stillness holds," and that no sound makes itself heard save the faint sighing of the night-wind in the woods up yonder, and the "lone and melancholy voice" of the sea, a mile away, as it breaks upon the silent shore.,For an instant he looked as if he would beat her. Then his face broke into a smile that held no fear for her. “Say, kid, you’re up to the limit; and I’m on the square with you. In three days, if you obey me, you’ll jump into your dad’s arms. I’ve got to lock you up now; but nothing’s going to hurt you, and I’ll see that you’re comfortable.”,Then Father gave Johnny a sealed envelope.,Ferdinand dreaded the effect of that despair, which the intelligence he had to communicate would produce in the mind of Hippolitus. He revolved some means of softening the dreadful truth; but Hippolitus, quick to apprehend the evil which love taught him to fear, seized at once upon the reality. 'Tell me all,' said he, in a tone of assumed firmness. 'I am prepared for the worst.' Ferdinand related the decree of the marquis, and Hippolitus soon sunk into an excess of grief which defied, as much as it required, the powers of alleviation.,"Now, do they?" says Mona. "I thought they always wore lovely clothes. In books they always do; but I was too young when with Aunt Anastasia in Dublin to go out. Somehow, what one imagines is sure to be wrong. I remember," laughing, "when I firmly believed the queen never was seen without her crown on her head.",‘Fix me the apple on his head’.”,Behind her rises a tall shrub of an intense green, against which the soft whiteness of her satin gown gleams with a peculiar richness. Her gaze is fixed upon a distant planet that watches her solemnly through the window from its seat in the far-off heaven, "silent, as if it watch'd the sleeping earth.",Then she is pleased, and slips her hand into his, and goes along the quiet road, beside him with a heart in which high jubilee holds sway.,They crossed the sunflecked grass, hand in hand. As they reached the pine grove the girl pointed away above the trees. "Look," she whispered.,“Yes, but it is so sad.”,“Interesting all right, but I wouldn’t swap the Service for it by a long shot!”,"By the by," he says, once more restored to something like hope, as he notes her drooping lids and changing color and how she hides from his searching gaze her dark, blue, Irish eyes, that, as somebody has so cleverly expressed it, seem "rubbed into her head with a dirty finger," so marked lie the shadows beneath them, that enhance and heighten their beauty,—"by the by, you told me you had a miniature of your mother in your desk, and you promised to show it to me." He merely says this with a view to gaining more time, and not from any overwhelming desire to see the late Mrs. Scully..