Wyllard's Weird: A NovelBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Wyllard's Weird: A Novel
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Murder -- Fiction; Mystery and detective stories
"Kindly give me Mdlle. Duprez's address," he said. "I have very
important business with her, and should like to telegraph immediately."
"Mademoiselle did not leave any address, sir."
"Not leave any address? A woman of business! But she would have her
letters sent after her, surely," urged Bothwell.
"No, sir. She did not wish her letters to be sent. She would be on the
move, she said; and she would rather risk leaving the letters here than
having them follow her from place to place."
There was an air of reality about these particulars that convinced
Bothwell, whereby he showed his inexperience; for liars always go into
particulars, and prop up their falsehoods with a richness of detail
that is rare in truthful statements.
"Then you really don't know where Mdlle. Duprez is to be found?"
"No, sir; but I am expecting her home at any moment. She might walk in
while we are standing here."
"I wish she would," said Bothwell. "I want much to see her."
He left his card, and went away, cruelly disappointed.
And now he set his teeth, like a man who is going to meet his foe, as
he turned his face towards that white-walled villa on one of the hills
above the town, that fair and pleasant place where he had dawdled away
so many summer afternoons, all the while wishing himself anywhere
rather than in that Armida garden, feeling himself a knave and a
dastard for being there. He hated the place now with a deadly hatred.
It seemed to him that those white walls had been built of dead men's
bones, as if the house within and without savoured of the charnel.
The good old man, so fooled, so wronged by a false wife and false
friend, was gone, lying at rest in the cemetery yonder, and Armida
reigned alone in her enchanted garden.
Bothwell walked to Fox Hill at his fastest pace, hurrying on with bent
brow, unobservant of anybody or anything that he passed on his way, as
if he would walk down the angry devil within him. But the devil was
not subjugated when Bothwell entered the classic portico. His livid
countenance, his gloomy eyes scared the sleek young footman from his
after-dinner listlessness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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