England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
Now she was not afraid of Mr. Schultz. Why should she be? He had been
very kind, and of course she was not ungrateful, but it was a shock to
see him there--a shock almost as great as that given by the pinkness of
Kenilworth, and, anyhow, she did not want to meet him again; anyhow, not
to-day; anyhow, not on the top of a tower. And it was quite plain to her
that he had perceived her presence, had recognized her, and was coming
up expressly because of that--that his views were not hers, that he did
want to meet her again, did want to meet her to-day, did want to meet
her on top of a tower--this tower.
She looked around her "like a hunted thing," as they say, and then she
remembered a very little room, hardly more than a recess, opening from
the staircase. If she hurried down, hid there, and stood very close to
the wall, he would pass by and not notice, and as he went up she could
creep down and out, and, keeping close to the walls, get away toward
Edward and Charles and the sheep and all the things that do not make for
conversation with Mr. Schultz.
Lightly and swiftly as a hunted cat she fled down the stairs on whose
lower marches was the sound of boots coming up toward her, echoing in
the narrow tower like the tramp of an armed man. It came to her, as she
reached the little room and stood there, her white gown crushed against
the red stones, how a captive in just such a tower in the old days she
and Edward had been talking of might have seized such a chance of escape
from real and horrible danger, might have hidden as she was hiding, have
held his breath as she now held hers, and how his heart would have beat,
even as hers was beating, at the step of the guard coming toward the
hiding-place, passing it, going on to the tower-top while he, the
fugitive, crept down toward liberty and sunlight and the good green
world roofed with the good free sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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