Read Books Online, for Free |
A Lady of Quality | Frances Hodgson Burnett | |
Containing the history of the breaking of the horse Devil, and relates the returning of his Grace of Osmonde from France |
Page 5 of 9 |
"By Gad!" said one over his cups, "there are things even a rake-hell fellow like me cannot do; but he does them, and seems not to know that they are to his discredit." There had been a time when without this woman's beauty he might have lived--indeed, he had left it of his own free vicious will; but in these days, when his fortunes had changed and she represented all that he stood most desperately in need of, her beauty drove him mad. In his haunting of her, as he followed her from place to place, his passion grew day by day, and all the more gained strength and fierceness because it was so mixed with hate. He tossed upon his bed at night and cursed her; he remembered the wild past, and the memory all but drove him to delirium. He knew of what stern stuff she was made, and that even if her love had died, she would have held to her compact like grim death, even while loathing him. And he had cast all this aside in one mad moment of boyish cupidity and folly; and now that she was so radiant and entrancing a thing, and wealth, and splendour, and rank, and luxury lay in the hollow of her hand, she fixed her beauteous devil's eyes upon him with a scorn in their black depths which seemed to burn like fires of hell. |
Who's On Your Reading List? Read Classic Books Online for Free at Page by Page Books.TM |
A Lady of Quality Frances Hodgson Burnett |
Home | More Books | About Us | Copyright 2004