Gryphons Castle

Gryphons Castle Download +88K "And quite right too," says Lauderdale. "You remember what Scott says:,"Yes, Sir Nicholas,—just an hour and a half. He desired me to say he had had another 'dart' in his rheumatic knee this morning, so hoped you would excuse him.",'There is a pleasure sure,No one answers; the very moanings of the old crone in the chimney-corner are hushed as the clear young voice rings through the house, and then stops abruptly, as though its owner is overcome with emotion. The men move back a little, and glance uneasily and with some fear at her from under their brows.,"Oh, no! it is not that! you must know it is not that," says Mona, in deep grief. "It is that I cannot marry you!"，"It is all your doing. How wretched we should have been had we never seen you!" she says, with tears of gratitude in her eyes.，I forget if I described it before, but it is a room quite perfect in every respect, a beautiful room, oak-panelled from floor to ceiling, with this peculiarity about it, that whereas three of the walls have their panels quite long, without a break from top to bottom, the fourth—that is, the one in which the fireplace has been inserted—has the panels of a smaller size, cut up into pieces from about one foot broad to two feet long.，Lady Rodney shudders."Then Manning it shall be," says Geoffrey, gayly. "I'll run up to Dublin, and if you give me your measure I'll bring a gown back to you."

Nothing daunted, however, by this reception, Geoffrey returns his grasp with interest, and, looking fresh and young and happy, runs past him, up the stairs, to his mother's room, to beard—as he unfilially expresses it—the lioness in her den. It is a very cosey den, and, though claws maybe discovered in it, nobody at the first glance would ever suspect it of such dangerous toys. Experience, however, teaches most things, and Geoffrey has donned armor for the coming encounter.,"What do you mean, Geoffrey?" demands his mother, with suppressed indignation.,"How can I go," he says, without daring to look at her, "until, at least, I ask for forgiveness?" He feels more nervous, more crushed in the presence of this little wounded Irish girl with her pride and her grief, than he has ever felt in the presence of an offended fashionable beauty full of airs and caprices. "Mona, love makes one cruel: I ask you to remember that, because it is my only excuse," he says, warmly. "Don't condemn me altogether; but forgive me once more.","What a darling you are!" says Rodney, in a low tone; and then something else follows, that, had she seen it, would have caused the weatherbeaten old person at the fire another thrill of tender recollection.,"I am in no pain," says Mona, crimson with shame and mortification. "You mistake everything. I have not even a scratch on me; and—I have no shoes or stockings on me either, if you must know all!",For Geoffrey the prelude has been played, and now at last he knows it. Up and down the little hall he paces, his hands behind his back, as his wont when deep in day-dreams, and asks himself many a question hitherto unthought of. Can he—shall he—go farther in this matter? Then this thought presses to the front beyond all others:—"Does she—will she—ever love me?",His passion carries Mona along with it.,"Wait till you see her," says Geoffrey, after a little pause, with full faith in his own recipe.,"Nay, hear me," exclaims he, turning for the first time to comfort her; and, as he does, she notices the ravages that the last hour of anxiety and trouble have wrought upon his face. He is looking thin and haggard, and rather tired. All her heart goes out to him, and it is with difficulty she restrains her desire to run to him and encircle him with her soft arms. But something in his expression prevents her.,"I regret that I met them," says Mona, who will not say she regrets she told the truth.,Of Christian charity,"If I was quite sure I shouldn't be dreadfully in the way," says Geoffrey, turning to Mona, she being mistress of the ceremonies..