Part 43 (1/2)

Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain

Ah, there were men of talent and fashi+on, who did not hesitate to ood, more or less anti-pathetic, and for whouished and charratify them, with--so to put it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live? Why, for everybody in the world but for hih it all, in spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against their mutual love, he lived for her Oh, he was the best, the best!

She listened as she stood there for the hu back She wanted to ask him to tell her the truth about The Dials She wanted, above all else, to see hiain

She reht and made the most of, and each after the other they becahts lay at anchor Penhaven was certainly one of the best She congratulated herself that she had conceived that day, and without any blaed it to herself, that if Jiether now

She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great fauteuil The brocade ainst which her head, frankly thrown back, defined its char lines Her bare arently to and fro, she continued to ht of Bulstrode, to love him

Some one cae was brought her to tell her what had beco syh the vast rooht, down the lanes and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jielus in the close And the discordant note of The Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the Penhaven bells Soht on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative ione to get rid of a troublesorippe He did not, in the few lines which told he was seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back

But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably treat her decently for at least a fortnight

”I don't know a creature,” she praised herself, ”ould have stayed on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out If he really loved one on? I don't know Unless he loved me could he have helped ure of her friend there began to group, as if for some special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen hiifts and benefits until the poor and outcast and forgotten and despised claiathered round hioric histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in ree characterized the s caure shi+ne How, she thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had lived for hi but the best? Upstairs, in her room, a few hours before, the e on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and e which when her beauty and her youth were gone, was all that could rean to blow across her soul a freshness She had indeed been drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been obliged to clis, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet fully, and the air on the heights was so better than wine

There is an unspoiled enjoyiven us pain It ative of passion to make the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that which never does har it loves So she could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without reproach And if the ardor and passion in her becahtness, a beauty in her face and in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he ca, had never seen before

With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle, Mrs Falconer's friend had been preparing hi with the woman he had left soh, swinging excite back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the bigenvelope the castleher there for hi more for him to feel The ecstasy he had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the ether there after so nantly to hi indeed And if the highest quality of gallantry is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world

One false swerve of the , and there would not be any ht justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived! Who would give him back what he had missed? The motto on the dials repeated itself to him: _Utere dum licet_

He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went downstairs It seemed to him as he put aside the portieres, that these curtains were at last all there was between hi ho, ht here It ith the very clear realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to find his friend

He had stopped toand friendly and lovely What, had he found her anything else?

But as rising fro back froreeted hi sense that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his control He could not speak

”Jihost! You look as though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a ht be polite to apologize to her for the entire desertion of the household

”My poor friend, what in Heaven's nah, there had been another!) She had thought voluht didn't so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he had honored, dined Shouldn't they have soether before the fire?

”I see effect upon my host”

”My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshi+re”

”Which means that he has found his duchess?”

”He has found his duchess”

When her friend entered the roo as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woht her she half attempted to play hat had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood passed

”That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with,” she said