Ann Boyd by William N. Harben

Author:William N. Harben
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620133682
Publisher: Duke Classics

XXI

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Left alone, still crouching on her door-step, Ann, with fixed eyes and a face like carved stone, watched him move away in the soft moonlight, the very embodiment of youth and faith. She twisted her cold hands between her knees and moaned. What was the matter with her, anyway? Was it possible that the recent raging fires of her life's triumph were already smouldering embers, half covered with the ashes of cowardly indecision? Was she to sit quaking like that because a mere youth wanted his toy? Was she not entitled to the sweet spoils of victory, after her long struggle and defence? Yes, but Virginia! After all, what had the innocent, sweet-natured girl to do with the grim battle? Never, in all Ann had heard of the constant gossip against her, had one word come from Virginia. Once, years ago, Ann recalled a remark of Mrs. Waycroft that the girl had tried to keep her mother from speaking so harshly of the lone brunt of general reproach, and yet Virginia was at that very moment treading the crumbling edge of the self-same precipice over which Ann had toppled.

The lone woman rose stiffly and went into the house to go to bed—to go to bed—to sleep! with all that battle of emotion in her soul and brain. The clock steadily ticking and throwing its round, brass pendulum from side to side caught her eye. It was too dark to see the hands, so she lighted a tallow-dip, and with the fixed stare of a dying person she peered into the clock's face. Half-past ten! Yes, there was perhaps time for the rescue. If she were to get to Chester's in time, her judgment of woman's nature told her one word from her would complete the rescue—the rescue of Jane Hemingway's child—Jane's chief hope and flag of virtue that she would still wave defiantly in her eyes. Without undressing—why, she could not have explained—Ann threw herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow, clutching it with tense, angry hands.

"Oh, what's the matter with me?" she groaned. "Why did that fool boy come here to-night, telling me that it would bring him to the gallows stained to the bone with the dye of hell, and that I must keep her in the right road—me? Huh, me keep a girl in the right track, so they can keep on saying I'm the only scab on the body of the community? I won't; by all the powers above and below, I won't! She can look out for herself, even if it does ruin an idiot of a man and pull him—It really would ruin him, though. Maybe it would ruin me. Maybe he's right and I ought to make a life business of saving others from what I've been through—saving even my enemies. Christ said it; there is no doubt about that. He said it. He never had to go through with what I have, though, for He was free from

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