Amazon Books authors

Amazon Books authors 173. The Queen of His Soul Shortly after midnight he softly turned the key in Lucy's door and looked in, and deeming that she lay asleep he passed in, closing the door behind him, that the roll of the ship might not slam the door and awaken the sleeper. The light was dim, but sufficiently clear for[Pg 306] eyes that had come out of the gloom or darkness. A mattress lay upon the deck close against the bedstead, which was emptied of its furniture, and upon this mattress was stretched the figure of Lucy Acton. She was fully dressed as in the day, save that she had removed her jockey-shaped hat. The bolster from the bedstead supported her head. Some of her dark hair had become disengaged and lay loosely about her cheek, giving the purity of marble to her brow in that light, and her sleep was so deep that she lay as though dead. On the deck close beside her grasp was a common table knife.,Here David, who had been fidgeting with his cigar, broke in impatiently.,Billy shook his head. "I dunno," he replied. "That's a hard question to answer.","She couldn't," grinned Griffin. "That's the point. She's so taken up with her pose as suffering martyr that she overlooks a trifle like good work. Heavens, there's the gong! I've kept you here gassing when I know you're crazy to get to work. Come along in, and I'll help you set up your stand before the model poses again.",Mrs. Wilson could scarcely believe her ears. "You don't mean that havin' took him you had any thoughts of keepin' him, Willium?" she managed to say.，"There was; but it was all dried up."，I wonder just how old Judge Wade is? I believe I will make up with Aunt Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married.，"No. I shall marry no one; not even Mr. Sarby, much as my mother wishes me to do so. I live only to avenge the death of Maurice, to recover his body from those who have stolen it. Come, major, tell me what you know."Lucy was not a young lady to sit idle. She could find something to do in every hour in the day. As Miss Acton did the housekeeping, Lucy was left to her own inventions, and being a girl of several[Pg 83] resources, she was very happy in pleasing herself. Miss Acton went to look after the affairs of the home, and to attend to the needs of a little congregation of poor who were ushered into the housekeeper's room one after another every morning, excepting Sunday, where they stated their wants and obtained such relief as Miss Acton's closets, stocked from her own purse, could supply; and if they did not get always exactly what they wished, they were sure of tender and consoling words, of sympathetic enquiry into their troubles, of a promise of some stockings for little James next week, of a roll of flannel for old Martha the day after to-morrow. Pleasant and instructive it might have been to witness this old lady in her hoop and flowered gown asking questions, handing purges, promising little gifts of apparel to the poor people, who ceaselessly sank in curtsies, or plucked at wisps of hair upon their foreheads whilst they scraped the ground behind with their feet.

"No, they are not. Geoffrey, people look much better when they are beautifully dressed, don't they?","David says they're slushy," pursued Patricia, meditating. "But he's only a boy.",Reading in the dry, suffering eyes she had turned upon him a purpose stronger than life itself, what could he do but take her in his arms and ask her to forgive him for the old meddler he was? Perhaps he had erred in this. He did not want to think so. But she looked so much like her mother that morning it might be—,Of owning a superb estate,,"Do you think, sir, that he could with safety be transferred to the Aurora?" asked Captain Acton, with an appearance of anxiety that seemed to render his evasion of Mr Fellowes' question undesigned. "We could nurse him there. We are a comfortable little ship, better found—certainly in the way of the cabin—than this vessel.","I think," says Geoffrey, slightly disconcerted by the sweet leisure of her gaze, "I have lost my way. I have been walking since sunrise, and I want you to tell me where I am.",Conversation may be divided into two classes—the familiar and the sentimental. It is the province of the familiar, to diffuse cheerfulness and ease—to open the heart of man to man, and to beam a temperate sunshine upon the mind.—Nature and art must conspire to render us susceptible of the charms, and to qualify us for the practice of the second class of conversation, here termed sentimental, and in which Madame de Menon particularly excelled. To good sense, lively feeling, and natural delicacy of taste, must be united an expansion of mind, and a refinement of thought, which is the result of high cultivation. To render this sort of conversation irresistibly attractive, a knowledge of the world is requisite, and that enchanting case, that elegance of manner, which is to be acquired only by frequenting the higher circles of polished life. In sentimental conversation, subjects interesting to the heart, and to the imagination, are brought forward; they are discussed in a kind of sportive way, with animation and refinement, and are never continued longer than politeness allows. Here fancy flourishes,—the sensibilities expand—and wit, guided by delicacy and embellished by taste—points to the heart.,"I am glad you have at last deigned to take some small notice of me," says he, with a faint touch of pique in his tone. And then, looking at him again, she sees it is the young man who had nearly ridden over her some time ago, and tells herself she has been just a little rude to his Grace the Duke of Lauderdale.,“Don’t you think it might help if I got my boss, Mr. Whitney, to come down and talk to him about it?”,"You don't know what you are talking about," says Doatie, vehemently. "Every one of those interminable half-hours will be a year off your life. Mr. Boer is obnoxious, but Florence is simply insupportable. Wait till she begins about the choir, and those hateful school-children, and the parish subsidies; then you perhaps will learn wisdom, and grow headaches if you have them not. Violet, what is it Jack calls Mr. Boer?",When the fight ended in this fashion, the Indian drew himself up to his full height and with a scornful look on his face turned and walked out of the theatre. Bob followed and on the street found the man he had helped waiting for him.,"Mercies on us!" cried the amazed deacon, clutching the fence for support. "Whose voice was that? You heard it, men. Whose was it?".