Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
io . , ‘ . Se .
~ a yo ae , sty
Dogs
balk your generous.intentions, but I do not want money— |
at present. Iam not rich, excepting in the sense that the: a
ents No, I-
man: whose requirements are small'is never poor.
do not want your money, Violet. Some day I may—-I only
say I may—come to you and remind you of my share in
_.this little business. Perhaps I may-never do so; but, at.
any rate, your bare ‘I thank you’ will reward. me suffi- -
ciently now.”’ oe
‘Then, I thank you!” she said.
He pressed her hand, looked into her eyes with the same
half-comical smile, and then left her. » mn
- OHAPTER KXME 0
Biair came back to town, thin, and pale, ‘and haggard,
With only one desirein his heart: to forget the past and
kill the present! He had been wild and reckless:as @
youth, and it had only been his love for Margaret that had
checked him in his road to ruin.
Ifshe had still been by his side, he would have swung -
round and become one of the steadiest of men—she would
have been his saving and guardian angel. But he had lost
her, and with her all that had made life worth living.
~ So he came back to the old life in London, hating it with
@ weariness bitter as death, and yet not knowing of any
‘ other way in which to kill time and escape from the past.
As Austin Ambrose had said, his friends were glad to
see him, but they were aghast at the change which a few
weeks had wrotight in the ol
ithe pace he was going alarmed even the most reckless of
i
i them.
itterness in hig manner which w
_ play of curiosity would be resented, '
“'T can’t make Blair out,’ said Lord Aldmere to Colonel
_ ./ Floyd. -It was at a well-known club, which does not open os
-its ‘doors until well-regulated people have gone to bed.
‘What he has been doing, Heaven only knows; but I never :
saw a man so changed. Why, it was only this summer
| that he was in the best of form, bright as a—a star, don’t
you know, and. now--look at.
ing across the room at Blair,
fire, a big cigar in his mouth, his h
on his breast, his sad eyes fixed gloom
Never saw such a change in a man in
as he sat moodily over the
aggard face drooping
all my life.” -
“He has been ill, you know,” said the colonel, eying the
bled regard; ‘had. a.
drooping, listless figure with a trou
. fever and all that kind of thing.”
WILD. MARGARET, 808
d light-hearted Blair; and =. '
They dared: not ask him any questions, for there was ..
- something about him, a touch of savageness and smothered
arned them that any dis-
him!” he concluded, glanc- .
ily on the ground. —