Gratia's Trials — page 194: what you’re looking at

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GRATIA’S TRIALS. 185 Alicia was dressed at last, and gone down into the drawing- room, and Gratia, weary and listless, had crept down the side staircase into the room where she had stood on that eventful May day when Hugo Falconer had seen and spoken to her. ~ Suddenly the sound of a well-known voice struck on her ear —the voice of Hugo Falconer. Why had she come thither? she asked herself, She might have known that he must pass that way up to his room to dress for dinner, yet the possibility of a meeting never had presented itself to her mind. Instinctively she drew back into the shadow, as he passed within a few feet of her, talking to Mr. Melworth on some passing topic. Within a few feet of the girl whom he had been seeking so urgently and persistently for months. What would Hugo Fal-_ coner have given for the chance that lay so near him now? ‘‘He shall never, never know that the same roof shelters us both,” she murmured to herself, as she fled like a guilty person up the side stair-way and into the pretty little room that Alicia had allotted to her use, where she threw herself on the low sofa and wept as though her heart would break. Gratia was heavy-eyed and silent the next day when she came as usual to dress Alicia for the late Melworth Hall breakfast, and the latter noticed it. ‘*How pale you are,” she said; ‘‘and I have been telling Algernon all sorts of stories about your pretty face.” Gratia was rosy enough now. ‘‘Miss Melworth !” ‘‘Don’t look so savagely at me, Gratia!” laughed the young lady.. ‘‘I only said you weren't absolutely ugly, that’s all. He is decidedly an artist in his tastes, and sketches charmingly from real life; so I thought you might do as a model head for one of his crayons, that’s all.” | Gratia was silent, but in her inmost mind she resolved that Major Algernon Melworth should never have the opportunity Eomicbooks.co m