Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Phantom Fortune, a Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
page 277 of 654 (42%)
would come darkness and death. The blow that had paralysed one side of
her body must needs, if repeated, bring total extinction. She who
believed in no after life saw in her maimed and wasting arm the
beginning of death. She who recognised only the life of the body felt
that one half of her was already dead. But months had gone by, and Louis
Asoph had made no sign. She began to hope that his boasted documents and
witnesses were altogether mythical. And yet the engines of the law are
slow to put in motion. He might be working up his case, line upon line,
with some hard-headed London lawyer; arranging and marshalling his
facts; preparing his witnesses; waiting for affidavits from India;
working slowly but surely, underground like the mole; and all at once,
in an hour, his case might be before the law courts. His story and the
story of Lord Maulevrier's infamy might be town talk again; as it had
been forty years ago, when the true story of that crime had been happily
unknown.

Yes, with the present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new
scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good
thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure
secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the
kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically to-day Lady
Maulevrier saw the stamp of power and dauntless courage in his
countenance and bearing. It is the inner mind of a man which moulds the
lines of his face and figure; and a man's character may be read in the
way he walks and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his
frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological
development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence
or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man
to wrestle with difficulty, and to conquer fate.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge