Читать книгу The Carolinian онлайн

6 страница из 72

Awhile thereafter he sat there, lost in thought, that line of pain deeply furrowed between his brows. Then he stirred and sighed and took up from the writing-table another letter that had reached him that same morning, a letter whose seals were still unbroken. The superscription was in the familiar hand of his friend Tom Izard, whose sister was married to Lord William Campbell, the Royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina. The letter would contain news of society doings in Charles Town. But Charles Town society at the moment was without interest for Harry Latimer. He dropped the letter, still unopened, pushed back his chair and wearily rose. He paced away to the window and stood there looking out upon the sunshine with vacant eyes.

He was at the time in his twenty-fifth year and still preserved in his tall, well-knit figure something of a stripling grace. He was dressed with quiet, patrician elegance, and he wore his own hair, which was thick, lustrous, and auburn in colour. His face was of that clear, healthy pallor so often found with just such hair. It was an engaging face, lean, and very square in the chin, with a thin, rather tip-tilted nose and a firm yet humorous mouth. His eyes were full without prominence, of a brilliant blue that in certain lights was almost green. Habitually they were invested with a slightly quizzical regard; but this had now given place to the dull vacancy that accompanies acute mental suffering.