Trouble viewing or printing this message? Click here to view as a Web page.
| birth, a ward of the King's, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else, I think, ever heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what became a daughter of her line." A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning forward from his seat, his wife's hand in his, gravely bent his head. "All this is known, lady," he said courteously. She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King's favorite, and the circle waited with her. "ORDEWYKCQt is known," said my lord. She smiled BTVNIIFOIproudly. "For so much grace, thanks, my lord," she said, then addressed hersICWVYFXUSelf again to the Governor: "Your Honor, that is the past, the long past, the long, longXWYNNSSSQ past, though not a year has gone by. Then I was aTFUKGOITA girl, proud and careless;[QBOYKQYIR now, your Honor, I am a woman, and I stand here in theEHPYHMXUA dignity of suffering and peril. I fled from England"—She paused, drew herself up, and TOSKIXFVGturned upon my lord a face and form so still, and yet so expressive of noble indignation, out- ragedVEBVXEMWO womanhood, scorn, and withal a kind of EVAXDHNCQangry pity, that small wonder if he shrank as from a blow. "I left the only world I knew," she said. "I[CDMFWDXJL took a way low and narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way that I—alone and helpless and bewildered—-could find, because that I, Jocelyn Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. WYQJHMQKLOhy did you follow me, my lord? YPXNGCMGDPou knew that I loved you not. You knew my mind, and that I was weak and friePSTHVYTBVndless, and you used your power. I must tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor com- passionYBHKCXWKLate, nor brave"—NUWEMURTA "I loved you!" he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across the table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was a fierce yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and outstretched arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the pageant, evil and magnificent, of his life. "You loved me," she said.EAFVSXQAV "I had rather you had hated me, my lord. I came to Virginia, your Honor, and men thought me the thing I professed myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they wooed mePVWOUBVHD as such. This one came and that one, and at last a fellow, when I said him nay and bade him begone, did dare to seize my hands and kiss my lips. While I struggled one came and flung that dastard out of the way, then asked me plainly to become his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in |
No comments:
Post a Comment