Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

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Not but what his coming, seeing, and conquering had been as swift as the most romantic could desire, one short month compassing it all, for there was a certain magnetism about Adam Lawton that, when he chose to exert it, was irresistible, while to those outside its influence he was doubly a bit of chilling steel.

Nor had his wife ever faltered in her loyalty to him; she would have given much more than he would take, for in the beginning hers had been a nature that sought happiness in pouring out her love freely and enveloping its object in it, at the same time giving the man she had chosen, through imagination, every noble and winning attribute that would increase her passion.

Two sons had been born to her before she had awakened from this ecstatic period and was perforce obliged to separate the real from the ideal. Not that Adam Lawton loved her a degree less strongly than when, calling upon her father on purely business matters, he had first seen her riding up the unkempt avenue of her home, her beauty and bearing lending distinction to the faded habit that she wore. His love was of a strange quality, a sort of transmutation of metals by sudden fire that, having once taken place, must of necessity be welded for all time. In reality an egotist, from his own point of view he was wholly unselfish, for he asked little for what he gave, and would allow none of the little daily services that nourish love, whose best food must have the flavour of mutual dependence.