Читать книгу The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales онлайн

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She glanced at the name, and felt a throb of the heart that almost choked her utterance, for it was the card of Ashton Carmichael!

Here, in her house! He had ventured to cross her threshold! It must indeed be a matter of importance that had nerved him to come here!

“Say I shall be down at once, Jasper.”

Her spirit rose as she went down the broad stairway of her husband’s home. She was on her own ground, safely intrenched; he was the intruder whom a word could thrust from her door.

Something of this was apparent in her beautiful face, in her erect head, her eyes sparkling with indignation.

Carmichael, who had not sat down in the formal room of state into which they had ushered him, felt it, and winced. He had come there relying upon his unconquerable audacity, and to be so soon put at a disadvantage he resented bitterly. But he did not mean to let her speak first.

“I know what you would say,” he began, with an assumption of humility. “I am a pretender, a man who pushes himself where he is not bidden; a villain, if you like. But I have some feeling left, and I mean to prove it to you.”