My Lord Gambara was talking and she was regarding him with eyes that were
half veiled, a slow, insolent smile upon her matchless face. Presently at
something that he said she laughed outright, a laugh so tuneful and light-
hearted that I thought I must be dreaming all this. It was the gay, frank,
innocent laughter of a child; and I never heard in all my life a sound that
caused me so much horror. He leaned across to her, and stroked her velvet
cheek with his delicate hand, whilst she suffered it in that lazy fashion
that was so peculiarly her own.
I stayed for no more. I wriggled back a little way to where a clump of
hazel permitted me to rise without being seen. Thence I fled the spot.
And as I went, my heart seemed as it must burst, and my lips could frame
but one word which I kept hurling out of me like an imprecation, and that
word was "Trull!"
Two nights ago had happened enough to stamp her soul for ever with sorrow
and despair. Yet she could sit there, laughing and feasting and trulling
it lightly with the Legate!
The little that remained me of my illusions was shivered in that hour.
There was, I swore, no good in all the world; for even where goodness
sought to find a way, it grew distorted, as in my mother's case. And yet
through all her pietism surely she had been right! There was no peace, no
happiness save in the cloister.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246