Stories with a Vengeance — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

OR RUNS YOUR MIND ON ANOTHER LOVE? BY JESSIE CHAPTER I. In the soft, purple glow of a summer’s evening, in an ancient cathedral town in France, a tall, handsome Englishman was enjoying his after-dinner cigar, as he saun- tered leisurely past an old chateau in the suburbs. With a cry of pain, a tiny dog fell from the balcony at his feet, and at the same moment an exclamation of distress was heard overhead. Sir Clyffe Dashwood looked up. The Countess Lucy looked down, stretch- ing her slender white neck over the scarlet cushions, where she had been playing with her lap-dog when he fell. As their eyes met, a mysterious chord of affinity seemed to stretch from heart to heart ! He gently lifted the injured animal, and carried it up the marble steps, just as the door was opened by a servant in green livery. ile the two men were examining Fido’s injuries, the little creature’s mistress came flying down the stairs to receive him, and to thank the stranger for his kindness. If he thought the young lady pretty at a distance, she appeared simply adorable in roximity, with her deep, gray eyes, coral Eps, rose-leaf complexion, and hair the exact shade of Beatrice Cenci’s in - her picture at Rome. ' Presently the Countess De Belfort joined her daughter, thanked the stranger also, and courteously invited him to enter, saying, with a smile, “ You don’t recollect me, Sir Clyffe ; but you once took me in to dinner at your cousin’s house in Devon- shire, when my late husband and I were in England three years ago.” Google MACLAREN, Then he remembered ; they shook hands heartily, and he remained to spend the most charming evening he ever enjoyed in his life. While he and his hostess sat discussing mutual reminiscences, Lucy was up-stairs, arranging her unlucky pet for the night; and when she returned, they had coffee and music, of which latter Sir Clyffe was a professed amateur. The young girl played delightfully upon the harp, and, at their guest’s desire, sang some quaint old Provencal ballads in one of those rich soprano voices which make the hearers feel its possessor has passionate capabilities of joy and sorrow in her nature. All too rapidly the evening flew past, and (almost to the Baronet’s own astonish- ment) he promised, at parting, to do him- self the pleasure of returning next after- noon. A few hours had turned his plans upside ~ down. Yesterday he had as much intention of flying as of spending three days in a place at which he had merely stopped for a night, en route to Marseilles, where his yacht lay ready for a cruise in the Mediter- ranean. Now he found it absolutely impossible to tear himself away. That he should find Lucy captivatin was only natural, for her sweet, unaffecte simplicity could hardly prove less than refreshing to a man who, while not at all blasé, had yet lived much in society, and seen caps by the score “set” at him and his twenty-five thousand a year. His age was thirty-nine, but he looked quite half a dozen years younger. His wife had died three years before, CY, JOO S CO)