Part 39 (1/2)
Ah, had he! It was hard to remember that _Had_ he said so?
”I think,” she whispered, ”you need not keep him away now, if he should want to co, she added in a voice reat duchess, ”You may trust me I _want_ him to come-- There, I've said it I _hope_ he'll coo away,” he finished ”You can't bear it”
The duchess shook her head ”I'll go to hi?”
”Yes, when you came”
He cried out: ”Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be back for the Christmas holidays You htfully, and was in a second the elusive woible, and impossible to seize
”No, no,” she said, ”please don't exile yourself either to-day or to-morrow It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you that I'm not jealous I've decided to wait until that lovely woesse to no purpose, its vastness through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy
He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and refusals, one after another, caentleman's mood led hiuests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when charity would have been sweet And it ith really tragic :
”And they all with one consent began to make excuse”
He quite waited for a line from Mrs Falconer, which would tell hiht of what he believed to be Jiard the matter with a pity for her
”If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!”
The satin shi+ne of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of spruce and pine, and heavier scent of herance Setting and decoration suggested a feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the doors of his children's rooates were twisted with green
The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tra, and the bare, naked sunlight fell over the bare nakedness of the land The little low clumps of neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets betood and field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his hands in his pockets, his Grace covered th of the land or to listen for wings
Coveys had flown up and away unseen by his had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's indifference The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries bright ah in the poplars the parasite lobules like fairy grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun As the forest edges closed about hi, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to avoid
There was soent sweetness, and in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of hemlock and the cold earthy arorant thicket that sh a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the festivities of the time He heard the bird as persistent and sharp-voiced, and, for the first tiagars! He called them to no purpose, whistled and waited They were a new brace and young God knehere they had cut away to
Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light filtered gently out and ed up by the cold and closer wood
Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves There beeches, red as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the mould Westboro' did not knohere he had wandered to, but here and there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its , a broken pedestal held its slender colust the tree trunks as ht in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of tireen The sun at thisthe noon The Duke stooped down and through the glass read the inscription:
_Utere duht ”This is Bulstrode's property”
Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at the end of it a gate
”What the deuce could Ji here?”
He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the place as he had s in front of him and called them Before hih hedge, and directly opposite hione ain and turned about to have one last look back at the enchanting place As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid, peering back at the opening he had left not five lass and staring at two figures who had co dial