Between Snow and Fire — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

fe * ae ad ~ * * oye. | © erm ‘ poetic justice’ is, I hs believe, more than a mere perOnt. If we are doing wrong through love for each other e shall have to expiate it at some future time. We shall be made to suffer “trough each other. Now, Eanswyth, what do you say to that?” “Tsay, amen. I say that the future can take care of itself, that I defy it—no—wait !—not that. But I say that if this delirious, entrancing happiness is wrong, I would rather brave torments a thousandfold, than yield up one iota of it,’’ she answered, her eyes beaming into his, and with a sort of proud, defiant ring in her voice, as if throwing down the gage to all power, human or divine, to come between them. “T say the same—my life!” was his reply. Thus the bargain was sealed—ratified. Thus was the glove hurled down for Fate to take up, if it would. The time was coming when she—when both—would remember those defiant, those deliberate words. Not to-day, however, should any forebodings of the Future be suffered to cloud the Present. They fled, all too quickly, those short, golden hours. They melted one by one, merged into the dim glories of the past. Would the time come when those blissful hours should be conjured forth by the strong yearnings of a breaking heart, conjured forth tc be lived through again and again, in the day of black and hopeless despair, when to the radiant enchantment of the Present should have succeeded the woe of a never-ending and rayless night? But the day was with them now—‘idyllic, blissful—never to be forgotten as long astheytwo should live. Alas, that it fled! Tom Carhayes returned that evening in high good humour. He wasaccompanied by another man, a neighbour- ing settler of the name of Hoste, a pleasant, cheery fellow, who was a frequent visitor at Anta’s Kloof. “Well, Mrs. Carhayes,” cried the latter, flinging his right leg over his horse’s neck and sliding to the ground side- saddle fashion, ‘your husband has been pretty well sell- ing up the establishment to-day. What do you think of that? Hallo, Milne. How ’do?” “T’ye made a good shot this time,” assented Carhayes, “ I’ve sold off nearly three thousand of the sheep to Reid, the contractor, at a pound a head all round. What do you (E(oY HayiiCel exexe)