Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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The earl was touched, for she had crept up to him and laid her hand gently on his arm.

He kissed her on the forehead; he looked at the violet eyes, with their golden light; he laid his hand on the shining masses of waving hair.

Then he sighed.

He was thinking of other and earlier days in his troubled life.

His memory conjured up the image of the wife who had proved so false to him, who fled with her paramour, and died in a foreign land unheeded and uncared for.

How about the young creature before him?

Was she to be trusted?

Time will show.

“I shall learn,” said he, in answer to her question, “to love you best for your own sake, and no other.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Aveline, a little disconcerted, “for my own sake?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I think you good and true—​nay, I am sure of it. Is this little fellow your son? You seem to me to look so very young that I can hardly believe you are a mother, or that I am a great grandfather,” he added, with a smile.

“You mustn’t tell people that, my lord,” observed Mr. Chicknell, in a bantering tone.