Phantom Fortune, a Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
page 247 of 654 (37%)
page 247 of 654 (37%)
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This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fräulein was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr. Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so Fräulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that morning, so she was perfectly free. The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all. Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament. It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads; and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his cigar case. 'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.' |
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