The Secret Rose (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... than the desolate land where Orchil drives the iron-horned and iron-hoofed deer; and all the while Owen was greatly perturbed at having put so great a lady to so great a trouble, for a thing that mattered to no man. About a week passed over in this way. At last one day he was so absorbed that the cattle he was minding broke into a barley-field, and when he had gathered them together it was far past his usual The Book, r i i rr i 11 of the Great hour for breaking off work, and he was Dhoul and very tired; and his nerves, already shaken eRed" by his trouble and by his drunkenness, made him start at every sound. When he reached his cabin he threw himself into his chair, and fell into a broken sleep, to be presently awakened by hearing some one moving about the room. When the dream had fallen from his eyes he saw a beautiful woman in a pale saffron dress looking at her own foot-mark in the ashes; and at the sight, the memory of all the trouble women had brought upon him passed over his mind, and he cried out, 'Woman, what do you want here?' She turned toward him a face so full of the tender substance of mortality, and smiled upon him with lips so full of red mortal blood that he did not recognize the immortal of his dreams; and she said to him in a caressing voice: 'You have always loved me better than your own soul, and you have sought for me The everywhere and in everything, though Rose. without knowing what you sought, and now I have come to you and taken on mortality that I may share your sorrow.' He saw that she was indeed Cleena of the Wave, but so changed that all the trouble he had ever had from women, and all his anger against them were between him and her; and standing up hurriedly he cried: 'Woman, begone out of this. I have had enough of...