The Midnight Queen by May Agnes Fleming
page 29 of 361 (08%)
page 29 of 361 (08%)
|
"Quite sure?" said Sir Norman, indignantly. "Of course I am! Do you think I could be mistaken is such a case? I tell you I would know that face at Kamschatka or, the North Pole; for I don't believe there ever was such another created." "So be it, then! Your object, of course, in following that cart is, to take a last look at her?" "Precisely so. Don't talk; I feel in no mood for it just at present." Ormiston smiled to himself, and did not talk, accordingly; and in silence the two friends followed the gloomy dead-cart. A faint young moon, pale and sickly, was struggling dimly through drifts of dark clouds, and lighted the lonesome, dreary streets with a wan, watery glimmer. For weeks, the weather had been brilliantly fine - the days all sunshine, the nights all moonlight; but now Ormiston, looking up at the troubled face of the sky, concluded mentally that the Lord Mayor had selected an unpropitious night for the grand illumination. Sir Norman, with his eyes on the pest-cart, and the long white figure therein, took no heed of anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath, and strode along in dismal silence till they reached, at last, their journey's end. As the cart stopped the two young men approached the edge of the plague-pit, and looked in with a shudder. Truly it was a horrible sight, that heaving, putrid sea of corruption; for the bodies of the miserable victims were thrown in in cartfuls, and |
|