Читать онлайн
Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily
Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily
GUY KENMORE'S WIFE;
OR,
HER MOTHER'S SECRET
CHAPTER I
"The moonlight lay on the garden wall,
And bathed each path in a silver glow;
And over the towers of the grey hall
Its pearly banner was trailing low."
It was a night of nights. Moonlight—the silvery, mystical, entrancing, love-breathing, moonlight of exquisite June—fairest daughter of the year—lay over all the land. The bay—our own beautiful Chesapeake—shone gloriously in the resplendent light, and rolled its foam-capped, phosphorescent waves proudly on to the grand Atlantic.
"Ten thousand stars were in the sky,
Ten thousand in the sea.
"For every wave with dimpled crest
That leaped upon the air,
Had caught a star in its embrace,
And held it trembling there!"
A wind from the sea—cool, and salty, and delicious—came up to Bay View House, and stole in with the moonlight to the lace-draped windows of the parlor where a crumpled little figure crouched in a forlorn white heap on the wide, old-fashioned window sill, sobbing desperately through the plump little hands, in which the girlish face was hidden.
The spacious parlor with its handsome, old-fashioned furniture, and open piano, was deserted, and the weeping of the girl echoed forlornly through the room, and blended strangely with the whispers of the wind, and the sounds of the sea.
Old Faith put her grotesque, white-capped head inside the parlor door.
"Miss Irene, darling, won't you come and take your tea now?" said she, persuasively. "There's strawberry short-cake, and the reddest strawberries, and yellowest cream," added she, artfully appealing to the young lady's well-known epicurean tastes.
A sharp little voice answered back from the window seat:
"I won't take a thing, Faith; I mean to starve myself to death!"
"Oh, fie, my dearie, don't, now," cried Faith. "Come up-stairs, and let me tuck you in your little white bed, there's a love!"
"I won't, so there! Go away and leave me alone, Faith," cried the girl, through her stifled, hysterical sobs.