Ragged Lady — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 222 pages of information about Ragged Lady — Volume 2.

Ragged Lady — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 222 pages of information about Ragged Lady — Volume 2.

The night was blustering, and the wind that blew the ragged clouds across the face of the moon, swooped in sudden gusts upon the bridge, and the deluge rolling under it and hoarsely washing against its piers.  Belsky leaned over the parapet and looked down into the eddies and currents as the fitful light revealed them.  He had a fantastic pleasure in studying them, and choosing the moment when he should leap the parapet and be lost in them.  The incident could not be used in any novel of his, and no one else could do such perfect justice to the situation, but perhaps afterwards, when the facts leading to his death should be known through the remorse of the lovers whom he had sought to serve, some other artist-nature could distil their subtlest meaning in a memoir delicate as the aroma of a faded flower.

He was willing to make this sacrifice, too, and he stepped back a pace from the parapet when the fitful blast caught his hat from his head, and whirled it along the bridge.  The whole current of his purpose changed, and as if it had been impossible to drown himself in his bare head, he set out in chase of his hat, which rolled and gamboled away, and escaped from his clutch whenever he stooped for it, till a final whiff of wind flung it up and tossed it over the bridge into the river, where he helplessly watched it floating down the flood, till it was carried out of sight.

XXV.

Gregory did not sleep, and he did not find peace in the prayers he put up for guidance.  He tried to think of some one with whom he might take counsel; but he knew no one in Florence except the parents of his pupil, and they were impossible.  He felt himself abandoned to the impulse which he dreaded, in going to Clementina, and he went without hope, willing to suffer whatever penalty she should visit upon him, after he had disavowed Belsky’s action, and claimed the responsibility for it.

He was prepared for her refusal to see him; he had imagined her wounded and pathetic; he had fancied her insulted and indignant; but she met him eagerly and with a mystifying appeal in her welcome.  He began at once, without attempting to bridge the time since they had met with any formalities.

“I have come to speak to you about—­that—­Russian, about Baron Belsky—­”

“Yes, yes!” she returned, anxiously.  “Then you have hea’d”

“He came to me last night, and—­I want to say that I feel myself to blame for what he has done.”

“You?”

“Yes; I. I never spoke of you by name to him; I didn’t dream of his ever seeing you, or that he would dare to speak to you of what I told him.  But I believe he meant no wrong; and it was I who did the harm, whether I authorized it or not.”

“Yes, yes!” she returned, with the effect of putting his words aside as something of no moment.  “Have they head anything more?”

“How, anything more?” he returned, in a daze.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Ragged Lady — Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.