The Guinea Stamp by Alice Chetwynd Ley

Author:Alice Chetwynd Ley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-03-02T08:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN - The Building of a Ship

More than a week passed away, and the visitors to Shalbeare House had settled themselves in tolerably comfortably. Between Kitty and Guy the estrangement still persisted, in spite of a determined effort to dissipate it which was made on at least one occasion by the gentleman. A neighbouring family had been dining at the house on that particular evening, and dancing had been proposed. Neither party to the quarrel—if such it could truly be called—had any desire to parade it in the open: so Kitty did what was expected of her, and stood up with Mr. Dorlais for the first dance. He caught her hand, and squeezed it expressively as they came together after one of the brief separations which were part of the movements of the dance. She looked up at him, and could not entirely fail to react to the eloquent message of his dark eyes.

“Kit, my love!” he whispered, as they went down the dance in close proximity. “Put an end to my suffering, and let us be friends.”

She turned towards him, her heart in her look, at that moment entirely ready for reconciliation.

But as ill luck would have it, Georgina Masterman, who was in front of them in the formation, chose that very moment to turn back and make some jesting, trivial remark to Guy. It might not have been entirely luck, at that, for she had been quietly observing the pair during their recent brief interchange: however it was, it had the result of breaking the spell for Kitty, at least. Guy Dorlais was obliged by the rules of civility to make some answer, though noticeably curt. After that, they were again separated by the movements of the dance, and did not come together again until the music ended in a noisy scrape of fiddles and a round of hearty applause.

Try as he would, Dorlais could find no other opportunity, and was left to reflect uselessly that, if it had only been summer time, and the doors to the garden thrown open, he would have known how to contrive a tête-à-tête with his recalcitrant lady under a friendly moon.

The Honourable Algernon Cholcombe and Miss Feniton seemed to have established a footing of easy raillery which so far did not appear to be leading in the direction of the altar. Lady Feniton knew not what to think; nightly she poured her doubts into Sir Walter’s unwilling—and frequently inattentive—ears.

“A jest is all very well,” she remarked, coming into the library one evening after everyone else had retired except the three younger gentlemen, who were still engaged in playing a game of billiards elsewhere in the house, “but they will not come together by that road!”

“I am sure you are right, my love,” he answered, looking up briefly from the book he was reading.

“Of course I’m right!” she said, somewhat snappishly. “When I warned her not to be too stiff with him, I never dreamed that it would ever come to my

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.