One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
at times a treachery. Still she was compelled to judge.
When he said to her at night, pressing both her hands: ‘This
is the news of the day, my love! It’s death at last. We shall soon
be thanking heaven for freedom’; her fingers writhed upon his
and gripped them in a torture of remorse on his behalf. A
shattering throb of her heart gave her sight of herself as well.
For so it is with the woman who loves in subjection, she may
be a critic of the man, she is his accomplice.’
‘You have a letter, Victor?’
‘Confirmation all round: Fenellan, Themison, and now
Skepsey.’
He told her the tale of Skepsey and Jarniman, colouring it,
as any interested animated conduit necessarily will. Neither
of them smiled.
The effort to think soberly exhausted and rolled her back
on credulity.
It might not be to-day or next week or month: but so much
testimony pointed to a day within the horizon, surely!
She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The murderous
hope stood up, stood out in forms and pictures. There was
one of a woman at her ease at last in the reception of guests;
contrasting with an ironic haunting figure of the woman of
queenly air and stature under a finger of scorn for a bold-faced
impostor. Nataly’s lips twitched at the remembrance of quaint
whimpers of complaint to the Fates, for directing that a large
instead of a rather diminutive woman should be the social
offender fearing exposure. Majesty in the criminal’s dock, is a
confounding spectacle. To the bosom of the majestic creature,
all her glorious attributes have become the executioner’s implements.
She must for her soul’s health believe that a day of
release and exoneration approaches.
‘Barmby!—if my dear girl would like him best,’ Victor said,
in tenderest undertones, observing the shadowing variations
of her face; and pierced her cruelly, past explanation or understanding;—not
that she would have objected to the Rev.
Septimus as officiating clergyman.
She nodded. Down rolled the first big tear.
We cry to women; Land, ho!—a land of palms after storms at
sea; and at once they inundate us with a deluge of eye-water.
‘Half a minute, dear Victor, not longer,’ Nataly said, weeping,
near on laughing over his look of wanton abandonment
to despair at sight of her tears. ‘Don’t mind me. I am rather
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