Jack Stands

Jack Stands download +128k "A year! An eternity!","Do not!" says Mona, again, as though fresh words are impossible to her, drawing her breath quickly. Her evident agitation incenses him to the last degree. Opening the drawer impulsively, he gazes at its contents.,She flushes, opens her lips as if to speak, and yet is dumb,—perhaps through excess of emotion.,He hesitates. He is tired, and hungry too; there is no denying. Even as he hesitates, a girl coming out to the door-step puts her hand over her eyes, and shouts pleasantly from afar to her mistress,—,"Oh, no, not now," pleads Violet, hastily. She rises hurriedly from her seat, and lays her disengaged hand on his lips. For once in her life she loses sight of her self-possession, and a blush, warm and rich as carmine, mantles on her cheek.，To this it is difficult to make a telling reply. Mona says nothing she only turns her head completely away from him, as if to conceal something. Is it a smile?—he cannot tell. And indeed presently, as though to dispel all such idea, she sighs softly but audibly.，"Hist, Miss Mona! hist!" says this voice close at Mona's ear. She starts violently.，"Mona! Do you want me to stay?" asks he, suddenly, taking her hands in his. "Tell me the truth.""I have a great mind to say something uncivil to you, if only to punish you for your coldness," says Geoffrey, lightly, cheered by her evident sincerity. "But I shall refrain, lest a second quarrel be the result, and I have endured so much during these past few hours that

"I may as well talk while I can: soon you will not be able to hear me, when the grass is growing over me," replies he, recklessly. "It was hardly worth my while to deliver you up that will, was it? Is not Fate ironical? Now it is all as it was before I came upon the scene, and Nicholas has the title without dispute. I wish we had been better friends,—he at least was civil to me,—but I was reared with hatred in my heart towards all the Rodneys; I was taught to despise and fear them as my natural enemies, from my cradle.",A terrace runs all along one side of the house, which is exposed to view from the avenue. And here, with a gaunt but handsome greyhound beside her, stands a girl tall and slim, yet beautifully moulded. Her eyes are gray, yet might at certain moments be termed blue. Her mouth is large, but not unpleasing. Her hair is quite dark, and drawn back into a loose and artistic coil behind. She is clad in an impossible gown of sage green, that clings closely to her slight figure, nay, almost desperately, as though afraid to lose her.,"You have come!" cries he, in a tone Mona has never heard before, and then—there is no mistake about the fact that he and the shadow have embraced each other heartily.,"Why don't you call me Nicholas, as Geoffrey does?","It is true," says Violet, evenly. "Yet, dear Mona, I wish you could try to be a little more like the rest of the world.","Now you speak sensibly. The sooner you begin to hate me the better.","My dear fellow, let well alone," says Nicholas, with his slow, peculiar smile. "It was I induced Mona to dance with 'that fellow,' as you call him. Forgive me this injury, if indeed you count it one.",Of Lady Rodney's studied dislike Mona's sensitive nature could not long remain in ignorance; yet, having a clear conscience, and not knowing in what she has offended,—save in cleaving to the man she loves, even to the extent of marrying him,—she keeps a calm countenance, and bravely waits what time may bring.,It was all terrible,—this young man coming and the thought that, no matter how they might try to disbelieve in his story, still it might be true.,"You do not understand them," returns she, sadly. "And I do. Besides, they will not harm me. There is no fear of that. I am not at all afraid of them. And—I must speak to them.",Seeing the poor child's terrible fear and anxiety, and that she is completely overwrought, he gives way, and lets her have the desired promise.,"Yes,—in her own estimation," says the duchess, somewhat severely, whose crowning horror is a frisky matron, to which title little Mrs. Lennox may safely lay claim..