Demon Lover by Fortune Dion

Author:Fortune , Dion
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE OLD MAN STOPPED WITH VERONICA THREE days and straightened out her affairs. Not that they were in any great tangle, for Lucas had evidently expected his death and made full preparation for it. The death of General Sawberry some five days before himself had placed him, and consequently Veronica, in possession of a considerable estate, of which the house in the river valley formed an outlying portion. Many affairs had to be settled before Veronica could enter upon the possession of her fortune, and the old man was very anxious for her to leave the gloomy and unhealthy house that had been the scene of the tragedy and make her home with himself and his sister pending the settlement of her affairs. But she refused. She had a feeling that Lucas was not far from her in this place, but that if she left it and went among the busy haunts of men he would lose track of her, and sinister though he had been in life, and ill-omened though the house might be, yet she could not bring herself to leave it. She longed for nothing so much as to be finished with the coil of affairs that had surrounded her since his death, and be free to enter into the silence where alone he might be able to approach her.

Therefore she bade the old man farewell, promising to call upon him if need should arise, and settled down to her solitude with the old caretaker as her sole attendant. No one came near her. The doctor, suspicious of the whole affair, was only too thankful to be clear of it ; and the vicar, believing Veronica to be a black sheep, had no mind to prejudice himself in the eyes of his white and woolly flock by trying to save her.

So the days went past. Veronica kept close to the routine that they had followed during the few short hours that she and Lucas had spent there together. In the morning she walked about the grounds and sat upon the log by the river, and in the evening she walked upon the terrace. Between whiles, she sat, sometimes in the room that had been a Milliard room and which served them as a living-room, and sometimes in the room in which Lucas had died. She believed that in the places which were familiar to him Lucas would wander, and that sooner or later they would meet ; but as day followed day and she got no hint of his presence, a chill fear crept into her heart. Was he indeed dead ? Dead in the sense in which most people use that word ? She knew quite well that he had discarded his physical body, that a man with an olive skin and erect carriage would no longer walk towards her with that light springing step that was so characteristic of him ; but she firmly believed that Lucas as a personality continued to exist—that the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.