Читать книгу The Valley of Squinting Windows онлайн

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Also it was because she had been thinking of that grand day and of the descending splendor of her son that she now commented so strongly upon the passage of the children to school. She had spoken bitterly to her own heart, but in that heart of hers she was a bitter woman.

This was such a sunny, lovely morning. It was the day of the June Races in the town of Mullaghowen, and most of the valley-dwellers had gone there. The winding, dusty road through Tullahanogue was a long lane of silence amid the sunlight. It appeared as an avenue to the Palace of Dreams. So it was not at all strange that Mrs. Brennan was dreaming forward into the future and filling her mind with fancies of the past. She was remembering herself as Nan Byrne, the prettiest girl in the valley. This was no illusion of idle vanity, for was there not an old daguerreotype in an album on the table behind her at this very moment to prove that beauty had been hers? And she had been ruined because of that proud beauty. It was curious to think how her sister and she had both gone the same way.... The period of a generation had passed since the calamity had fallen upon them almost simultaneously. It was the greatest scandal that had ever happened in these parts. The holy priest, whose bones were now moldering beneath the sanctuary of the chapel, had said hard words of her. From the altar of God he had spoken his pity of her father, and said that she was a bad woman.