Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; South America -- Fiction
"If you feel happy in your love, dear heart," he answered, "it is
because you love so much; and surely to love cannot be wrong, or to
take pleasure in it. Besides, in that you think so much of others you
but show your sweet unselfishness. Therefore, trouble not yourself
about the regrets for others that accompany your love. For, if to-day
they sorrow, they have had their times of happiness in the past, or may
have them in the future."
"It may be so," replied Ulama. "I doubt whether in all the world there
is another maiden who loves as I do, and therefore who could know the
dread that weighs me down. But as for me--ah, I tremble at my own great
joy, and fear it is too great to last. And every one is so kind to me
and seems so rejoiced to see me happy--that--that I can hardly keep
from crying."
And for a brief minute the gentle-hearted girl placed her hands before
her face to hide her tears--tears that were born of the great gladness
of her love and her tender sympathy for others.
And so for these two the day passed, like many that had gone before it,
in a blissful dream; but it was a dream from which they were soon to be
roughly awakened to the dark knowledge of what wickedness can achieve.
For, amid the feasting and among the revellers, were evil beings
who had plotted in their black hearts to kill the joy of the
gentlest-hearted maiden that ever with her sweetness brightened this
sorrow-laden earth; wretches that even then were spinning around her
the treacherous web designed by the fell Coryon to end her dream of
happiness for ever.
* * * * *
When Templemore woke up the next morning he gazed about him in
surprise. He was not in his usual sleeping apartment; but, instead, in
some room that was strange to him. It was small, dingy and ill-lighted,
and the couch upon which he found himself was not that on which he
had lately slept. He sprang up and, in vague alarm, looked round for
his clothes and his arms; the clothes were there, but there was no
revolver, and his rifle was nowhere to be seen. Even his sword and
dagger, that formed part of his usual dress, had been removed. Dressing
himself hastily, he rushed to the door, but it was fastened.
"Great heavens!" he exclaimed, "I am a prisoner; my rifle and pistol
have been taken away in my sleep. Oh, what, what has happened to
Leonard? What can it all mean?"
He hammered at the door, but no answer came. Then he tried to look out
of the window, but it was too high for him to be able to see anything
through it but the sky. There was nothing to be done but wait; so
he sat down upon the bed, a picture of misery and bewilderment, and
forthwith began to formulate all sorts of theories and ideas to account
for what had happened to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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