The Herons' Tower; A Romance (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III DELIUS T UITGARD had reached her seventeenth year when an J j event took place which shook to its very foundations the calm monotony of her life. Until then the years had passed unnoticed and unmarked by outward change, to all appearance one exactly like the other. Sometimes the snow lay a little longer, or occasionally the summer thunderstorms were unusually violent; but that was all. Her father seemed to grow busier every day, and her mother more of a confirmed invalid. Eitterbalg was shorter than ever in speech and more reproachful in tone. Year by year, and almost day by day, the old man mentally followed the progress of Count Kunibert's development had he but lived. It was always, "Ah, Count Kunibert would have been taking his fencing lesson," or else, " Maybe he would have killed his first boar." The only thing which would put the old man into perfect good-humour, and make him forget Count Kunibert for a time, was when Luitgard asked leave to look at the collection of seals which were his special pride. He liked to make a favour of so doing, and Sunday afternoons was the only time considered good enough for this aristocratic species of entertainment. Left thus to herself, it was not strange that Luitgard should brood over the stories of the past and grow more familiar with the names of her ancestors than with those of the people about her. What wonder ? They lived for her, and had lived for her ever since she could remember; the air seemed full of their voices, the very stones talked aloud of them. Their deeds wererecorded in marble or granite, and their faces were painted on canvas. They spoke to her in her night-dreams; they hovered round her in her day-dreams, nodding and whispering and laughing or weeping in the breezes that swept the old tre...