Detective and mystery stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Missing persons -- Fiction
When he came back to the drawing-room, a toilet bottle of _eau de
cologne_ in his hand, with her lace handkerchief he bathed her temples
and forehead. There was nothing very brotherly in his look as he peered
into her pale, sharp features, during the process. It was the dark and
pallid scrutiny of a familiar of the Holy Office, bringing a victim back
to consciousness.
She was quickly better.
'There, don't mind me,' she said sharply; and getting up she looked down
at her dress and thin shoes, and seeming to recollect herself, she took
the candle he had just set down, and went swiftly to her room.
Gliding without noise from place to place, she packed a small black
leather bag with a few necessary articles. Then changed her dress
quickly, put on her walking boots, a close bonnet and thick veil, and
taking her purse, she counted over its contents, and then standing in the
midst of the room looked round it with a great sigh, and a strange look,
as if it was all new to her. And she threw back her veil, and going
hurriedly to the toilet, mechanically surveyed herself in the glass. And
she looked fixedly on the pale features presented to her, and said--
'Rachel Lake, Rachel Lake! what are you now?'
And so, with knitted brows and stern lips, a cadaveric gaze was returned
on her from the mirror.
A few minutes later her brother, who had been busy down stairs, put his
head in and asked--
'Will you come with me now, Radie, or do you prefer to wait here?'
'I'll stay here--that is, in the drawing-room,' she answered, and the
face was withdrawn.
In the little hall Stanley looked again at his watch, and getting quietly
out, went swiftly through the tiny garden, and once upon the mill-road,
ran at a rapid pace down towards the town.
The long street of Gylingden stretched dim and silent before him. Slumber
brooded over the little town, and his steps sounded sharp and hollow
among the houses. He slackened his pace, and tapped sharply at the little
window of that modest post-office, at which the young ladies in the pony
carriage had pulled up the day before, and within which Luke Waggot was
wont to sleep in a sort of wooden box that folded up and appeared to be a
chest of drawers all day. Luke took care of Mr. Larkin's dogs, and
groomed Mr. Wylder's horse, and 'cleaned up' his dog-cart, for Mark being
close about money, and finding that the thing was to be done more cheaply
that way, put up his horse and dog-cart in the post-office premises, and
so evaded the livery charges of the 'Brandon Arms.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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