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A Lady of Quality | Frances Hodgson Burnett | |
Two meet in the deserted rose garden, and the old Earl of Dunstanwolde is made a happy man |
Page 8 of 10 |
Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or conscience--for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes and fashionable villains--well as he thought he knew all women and their ways, betraying or betrayed--this creature taught him a new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt. "Gods!" he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace, "Damnation! you are NOT a woman!" She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes should loose themselves from hers. "But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights," she said; "I am not one--I am a woman who would show other women how to bear themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why should I kneel, and weep, and rave? What have I lost--in losing you? I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife. What is it women weep and beat their breasts for--because they love a man--because they lose his love. They never have them." She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so--a heavy, sumptuous thing--in her white hands, her head thrown backward. "You marry soon," she asked--"if the match is not broken?" "Yes," he answered, watching her--a flame growing in his eyes and in his soul in his own despite. |
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A Lady of Quality Frances Hodgson Burnett |
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