Those who had raised the storm were responsible
for all that was done in it, and it was very barely that their lives
were spared.
That was the comfort Miss Woolmer gave. No one else could see any at
all, except a few old women in the parish, who spoke tenderly of poor
Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Eustace; but then they had sons or brothers who
had been out with the rioters, and after these twenty-six years no
one remembered the outrages and terrors of the time with anything but
horror; and the coming of the wild lad from the Bush was looked on as
the end of all comfort.
I meant, as soon as I heard he was on the way, to leave Arghouse,
make visits among friends, and decide on my future home, for, alas!
there was no one who wanted me. I was quite alone in the world; my
mother's cousins were not near, and I hardly knew them; and my only
relations were the bushrangers, as Lady Diana Tracy called them.
She was sister to Lord Erymanth, and widow to an Irish gentleman, and
had settled in the next parish to us, with her children, on the death
of her husband.
Her little daughter, Viola, had been spending the day with me, and it
was a lovely spring evening, when we sat on the lawn, wondering
whether I should ever care for anything so much as for those long
shadows from the fir woods upon the sloping field, with the long
grass rippling in the wind, and the border of primroses round the
edge of the wood.
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31