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Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 417
" I'm sorry."
No reply.
" Miss Ethelton!"
" Well?"
" You — you're there yet, ain't you?"
" Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?"
" Well, I — well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by and by — that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"
" I don't know —but I'll think about it. I'll try."
" Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!......Ah, me,
she's gone, and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again ! But she said good-bye . She didn't say good-morning, she said
good-bye!......The clock was right, after all.
What a lightning-winged two hours it was !"
He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for awhile, then heaved a sigh and said:
" How wonderful it is ! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my heart's in San Francisco!"
About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her bed-chamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, " How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic talent of mimicry!'' |
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ii.
FOUR weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital |
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