Prose Works (Volume 21) (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: greatloyal natures, less bitter is the memory of the lost when hallowed by tender sadness, than when coupled with scorn and shame. The wife is dead. Dead, too, long years ago, the Lothario ! The world has forgotten them; they fade out of this very record when ye turn the page; no influence, no bearing have they on such future events as may mark what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands and gazes into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as if living still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down; the false smiles flicker away from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on their aspects ? they sink, they shrivel, they dissolve ! CHAPTER VI. The wreck cast back from Charybdis. Somriem-toi de ta Gabrielle. Guy Darrell turned hurriedly from the large house in the great square, and, more and more absorbed in reverie, he wandered out of his direct way homeward, clear and broad though it was, and did not rouse himself till he felt, as it were, that the air had grown darker; and looking vaguely round, he saw that he had strayed into a dim maze of lanes and passages. He paused under one of the rare lamp-posts, gathering up his recollections o. the London he had so long quitted, and doubtful moment or two which turn to take. Just then, up from an alley fronting him at right angles, came sullenly, warily, a tall, sinewy, ill-boding tatterdemalion figure, and seeing Darrell's face under the lamp, halted abrupt at the mouth of the narrow passage from which it had emerged;?a dark form filling up the dark aperture. Does that ragged wayfarer recognize a foe by the imperfect ray of the lamplight ? or is he a mere vulgar footpad, who is doubting whether he should spring upon a prey ? Hostile his look ? his gesture ? the sudden cowering down of the st...