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Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth), 1835-1915

"Phantom Fortune, a Novel"


'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.
'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fraeulein.
'I was not _there_, but I heard him. I--I was sitting on the bank among
the pine trees.'
'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
than to hide yourself behind the trees.'
Mary blushed crimson.
'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
she said.
'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fraeulein, who felt that with
Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.


CHAPTER XV.
'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'

It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk in the terrace in front of
her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
landscape.


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