The Heiress of Greenhurst; An Autobiography (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. CHALECO AND HIS PLUNDER. All at once the old woman drew in her breath with a hiss, and bent her eyes on the door. She heard a footstep approach. The wooden lock moved, and a man perhaps of twenty-three or four years old presented himself. It was many years since the old Sibyl had been known to change countenance, or the unpleasant surprise that seized her at the sight of this man must have been visible. Yet of all his tribe he might have been deemed a welcome guest in any cave in the settlement, for he was a count or chief among the gipsies of Granada, and added to this, was the betrothed hus- band of Aurora, the grandchild of Papita. Why then should the old woman shrink within herself and receive Chaleco, the chief of her tribe, with so much inward trepidation ? I only know that, dazzled as her eyes had been by the moonlight, she had read enough in the stars to make her afraid of meeting Chaleco. The young count had all those strongly marked characteristics that distinguish his race: a clear olive complexion; heavy luptuotte lips, revealing teeth that shamed the whitest ivory; hair black and coarse, but, in his case, with a purple lustre upon it; eyes of vivid blackness, and cheek bones slightly, iu him, very slightly prominent, all lighted up by an expression of great strength sharpness, cunning and perseverance?that is, these passions must have been visible in his counWsance had he ever .allowed one. true feeling to speak in his face. His dress alone would have bespoken his position in the tribe to one accustomed to the habits of our people, still it did not entirely appertain to the portion of the country to which he belonged. Chaleco had travelled much in Catalonia, and having a rich fancy in costume, adopted many of their picturesque habits ...