AC dBooks

I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment
the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in
health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance
equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under
the very wing of Death.
But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satan
himself were torturing me.
The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might return
home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world
of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would
tumble about my head like a pack of cards.
He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political duties
would keep him in London a little longer, he said:
"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception in
honour of our home-coming. But why _now_, instead of three months ago?
_Do you know the reason?_"
As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up from my
feet to my heart.


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