Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Fiction
And where--oh, where--are those graves in the King's chapel in which the
tyrant Marc, touched with pity, ordered the fated lovers to be buried?
And, behold! out of the grave of Tristan there sprung a plant which went
along the walls, and descended into the grave of the Queen, and though
King Marc three several times ordered this magical creeper to be cut off
root and branch, it was always found growing again next morning, as if
it were the very spirit of the dead knight struggling to get free from
the grave, and to be with his lady-love again! Show me those tombs, Miss
Courtenay."
"You can take your choice," said Jessie Bridgeman, pointing to a green
mound or two, overgrown with long rank grass, in that part of the hill
which was said to be the kingly burial-place. "But as for your magical
tree, there is not so much as a bramble to do duty for poor Tristan."
"If I were Duke of Cornwall and Lord of Tintagel Castle, I would put up
a granite cross in memory of the lovers; though I fear there was very
little Christianity in either of them," said Angus.
"And I would come once a year and hang a garland on it," said
Christabel, smiling at him with
"Eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue--
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey."
He had recalled those lines more than once when he looked into
Christabel's eyes.
Mr. Hamleigh had read so much as to make him an interesting talker upon
any subject; but Christabel and Jessie noticed that of his own life, his
ways and amusements, his friends, his surroundings, he spoke hardly at
all. This fact Christabel noticed with wonder, Jessie with suspicion. If
a man led a good wholesome life, he would surely be more frank and
open--he would surely have more to say about himself and his associates.
They dawdled, and dawdled, till past four o'clock, and to none of the
three did the hours so spent seem long; but they found that it would
make them too late in their return to Mount Royal were they to wait for
sundown before they turned their faces homewards; so while the day was
still bright, Mr. Hamleigh consented to be guided by steep and perilous
paths to the base of the rocky citadel, and then they strolled back to
the Wharncliffe Arms, where Felix had been enjoying himself in the
stable, and was now desperately anxious to get home, rattling up and
down hill at an alarming rate, and not hinting at anybody's alighting to
walk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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