Now or Never (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. Days succeeded days, and still the Count kept on building card houses, and pulling them down again with the most indefatigable inconstancy. It would be impossible for me to record one half of the plans and arrangements which he industriously matured till the point of fulfilment. Then he scattered his card houses with a breath, and they were built no more. Like Othello, Count Korvinski was a feather for each wind that blew; and it is very difficult to catch hold of such feathers. So found Tom Winter. At first, that young man was very wroth; for, as my readers have seen, he was uncommonly anxious to get to England, and the more anxious he was, the more dilatory the Count showed himself. But it was difficult to be out of temper with him, and as futile as it was difficult; this Tom had long since discovered, so when the first storm of his impatience had spent itself, he altered his tactics. Instead of urging upon him the subject of the visit to England, he let it drop entirely, or if Count Max mentioned it, Tom waved it away with an appearance of stolid indifference. Then, instead of being resolutely ill-tempered and inimical to any schemeswhich might defer his pet project, he rather encouraged them. And as some people are made up of contrarieties, and are only acted on by them, so was the Count; and the very fact of Tom Winter's well-affected indifference served to cause a reaction. " Winter," he said one day, with the voice and manner that Napoleon might have given orders at the battles of Eylau or Austerlitz. " Winter, the first thing we do after Christmas, shall be to go to England." "I'm ready for marching orders," Tom rejoined magnanimously; " I shall be most happy to oblige you." Meanwhile, it yet wanted some weeks to Christmas, and Tom, feeling mor...