Her head drooped a little
so that he could not see her face, and one ungloved hand hung listlessly at
her side.
He bent down to take the slender hand in his, lifted it to his lips, and
quickly let it go; but not before she had felt his tears upon it. She
looked up a few minutes later, and the place was empty. Her tears fell
thick and fast. Never before had she suffered this exquisite pain--sadness
so intense, yet touching so close on joy. She sat alone in the
inexpressible melancholy of the late autumn; pale mists rising from the
river; dead leaves falling; and Fareham's tears upon her hand.
CHAPTER IX.
IN A PURITAN HOUSE.
How quickly the days passed in that gay household at Chilton! and yet every
day of Angela's life held so much of action and emotion that, looking back
at Christmas time to the three months that had slipped by since she had
brought Fareham from his sick bed to his country home, she could but
experience that common feeling of youth in such circumstances. Surely
it was half a lifetime that had lapsed; or else she, by some subtle and
supernatural change, had become a new creature.
She thought of her life in the Convent, thought of it much and deeply on
those Sunday mornings when she and her sister and De Malfort and a score or
so of servants crept quietly to a room in the heart of the house where a
Priest, who had been fetched from Oxford in, Lady Fareham's coach, said
Mass within locked doors.
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