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Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest by Stewart Edward White
page 127 of 154 (82%)
Such was the story Galen Albret saw in the little silver match-box.
That was the one flaw in his consciousness of righteousness; the one
instance in a long career when his ruthless acts of punishment or
reprisal had not rested on rigid justice, and by the irony of fate the
one instance had touched him very near. Now here before him was his
enemy's son--he wondered that he had not discovered the resemblance
before--and he was about to visit on him the severest punishment in
his power. Was not this an opportunity vouchsafed him to repair his
ancient fault, to cleanse his conscience of the one sin of the kind it
would acknowledge?

But then over him swept the same blur of jealousy that had resulted in
Graehme Stewart's undoing. This youth wooed his daughter; he had won
her affections away. Strangely enough Galen Albret confused the new
and the old; again youth cleaved to youth, leaving age apart. Age felt
fiercely the desire to maintain its own. The Factor crushed the silver
match-box between his great palms and looked up. His daughter lay
before him, still, lifeless. Deliberately he rested his chin on his
hands and contemplated her.

The room, as always, was full of contrast; shafts of light,
dust-moted, bewildering, crossed from the embrasured windows, throwing
high-lights into prominence and shadows into impenetrable darkness.
They rendered the gray-clad figure of the girl vague and ethereal,
like a mist above a stream; they darkened the dull-hued couch on which
she rested into a liquid, impalpable black; they hazed the draped
background of the corner into a far-reaching distance; so that finally
to Galen Albret, staring with hypnotic intensity, it came to seem that
he looked upon a pure and disembodied spirit sleeping sweetly--cradled
on illimitable space. The ordinary and familiar surroundings all
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