All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

834 this—to flee from Tomasz, my be- trothed.” “And do you regret that? ” queried milord wonderingly. ‘ Am I weighed in the balance with a yokel?”’ “No,” said she. ‘No, sir. Only to-morrow was to have been my wed- ding day, and to-night—to-night you have said much of what we shall be to each other, but nothing of what we shall be to the world.” Nikolai Iaroslaf laughed as he took her closer in his arms. “An honest girl,’ quoth he, well as a pretty one. My dear, do you doubt but that I mean fairly by you?” “ How can I judge when you have blinded me with love?” cried she. “There was poor Yekaterina, the miller’s daughter, who fled with the Count Vladimir. Who knows what has become of her? My brother Sine- ous says—” “ Pish! Yekaterina was Yekate- rina, and you are you. Is this Count- Vladimir become a standard on the countryside by which to estimate all other gentlemen? ” “You are angry,’ whimpered the girl, hiding her face against his chest. ‘Ah! do not look at me so. I will go away with you.” Far off across the vapor-shrouded tilled lands a dog howled mournfully. The girl shivered and struggled out of the man’s embrace. “To-morrow night—here!” she whispered as if afraid some one might overhear her. ‘‘ Good-by.” “ Wait!’ said he. Once more her senses swum drunk- enly as the breath was crushed from her body by the impact of his embrace. She walked unsteadily back toward the hollow where her father’s house stood. The man’s lips were acrid with the tears that had welled out from be- neath her eyelids where he kissed her. “ec i; Aut of the next day relatives kept arriving. as | THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. Some came riding bareback on shaggy ponies, some bumping over the rutted roads in springless droshkies, some afoot from the distance of a league or more. Everybody was good- humored and keen for what fun might be got out of the wedding. Old Yakof, Vera’s father, and her brother Sineous waved their hands to each newcomer as they bent to chesty work in the fields. The men guests, as they arrived, stabled their horses and went out among the furrows to help their hosts. The womenfolk bustled indoors, chattering, to poke sly fun at the bride-to-be, and to do their part in the kitchen, where great preparations for the prenuptial feast were under way. Vera, her drab mother and three buxom sisters, were there, elbow-deep in the mysteries of flour and pastry. Their faces were flushed from long standing over the ovens. ‘There were kisses and hugging on all sides, and an unceasing babel of conversation. “Oh, the eager, trembling maiden!” laughed black-eyed Olga, a cousin from a near-by village. ‘See how demure she is!” Vera gave the bantering company a troubled smile which conveyed the impression that her mind was astray on other things. “Do not tease me, please,” she said. “No, don’t do that! Let her think of her absent lover,’ cried Olga shrilly, whereat there was more rail- lery, in the midst of which Vera’s guilty confusion was attributed to the memory of her betrothed. It took the girl some time to chide herself into tranquillity again. *T am unstrung —I am silly,’’ she kept telling herself. “ But I thought for a moment that they knew of Ni- kolai Iaroslaf, the boyar. -I must be calm—calm. I must not let them sus- pect anything. Oh, if this long day would only come to an end!” The girl’s heart was not in her work. Her mind was twelve hours comicloooks.com