Читать книгу The Valley of Squinting Windows онлайн

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Here in this very room where she now sat remembering it all there had been such scenes! Her hair had been so thick and brown and there had been a rare bloom upon her skin as she had sat here alone with Henry Shannon, talking with him of queer things and kissing his dark, handsome face. And all through those far, bygone times she used to be thinking of his grand house and of his broad fields and the way she would one day assert herself in the joy of such possessions over her less fortunate sisters of the valley. Yet, ever mixed with her bright pieces of imagination, there had been such torturing doubts.... Her sister Bridget had always been so certain of her prey.

There had been times when Henry Shannon spent the night in the house. In those nights had been laid the foundations of her shame.... Very, very clearly did she remember the sickening, dreadful morning she had come to her mother with the story that she was going to have a child. How angry the elder woman had been, so lit within her all the wild instincts of the female against the betrayer of her sex? Why had she gone so far? Why had she not played her cards like her sister? There was no fear of her yet although she had got a proper hold of Loughlin Mulvey.... What was she to do at all? She who had had great ambitions was to become lower than the lowest in the valley.