The TruantsMason, A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley)
General
The Truants
Mason, A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley)
Fiction
Tony made no further movement towards him. The waiters went out on to
the terrace and lifted him up and carried him away. Then Tony turned
towards his wife. She had risen up from her chair and overturned it
when Tony had flung the interloper from the room. She now crouched
shuddering against the wall, with her eyes fixed in terror upon her
husband. As he turned towards her she uttered a sob and dropped upon
her knees before him. That was the end of all her scorn. She kneeled
in deadly fear, admiring him in the very frenzy of her fear. She had
no memory for the contemptuous letters which she had written and Tony
had carried under his pillow on the North Sea. Her little deceits and
plots and trickeries to hoodwink her friends, her little pretence of
passion for Lionel Callon--she knew at this moment that it never had
been more than a pretence--these were the matters which now she
remembered, and for which she dreaded punishment. She was wearing
jewels that night--jewels which Tony had given her in the good past
days when they lived together in the house in Deanery Street. They
shook and glittered upon her hair, about her neck, upon her bosom and
her arms. She kneeled in her delicate finery of lace and satin in this
room of luxury and bright flowers. There was no need for Tony now to
work to re-establish himself in her thoughts. She reached out her
hands to him in supplication.
"I am not guilty," she moaned. "Tony! Tony!"
CHAPTER XXXII
HUSBAND AND WIFE
The man who was no good had his triumph then. Only triumph was not at
all in his thoughts.
"Oh, please!" he said very quietly, "get up from your knees. I don't
like to see you there. It hurts me."
Millie raised her eyes to him in wonder. He did not mean to kill her,
then. All his violence, it seemed, was reserved for that poor warrior
of the drawing-rooms who had just been carried away stunned and
bleeding from the terrace. When Tony spoke to her his voice was rather
that of a man very dispirited and sad. He had indeed travelled through
the mountains of Morocco hot with anger against Callon the interloper;
but now that he had come face to face again with Millie, now that he
had heard her voice with its remembered accents, the interloper seemed
of little account, a creature to punish and be done with. The sadness
of his voice penetrated to Millie's heart. She rose and stood
submissively before him.
In the passage outside the door the waiters were clustered whispering
together. Tony closed the door and shut the whispers out. Upon the
terrace, outside the window, a man was hesitating whether to enter or
no. Tony went to the window.
"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you want?"
"I am Giraud, the schoolmaster of Roquebrune," said the man, timidly.
"I bring a letter from Mademoiselle Mardale."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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