Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if I
broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added,
flippantly.
"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne,
her dark eyes kindling--"you'd be just splendid!"
"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."
Susan held her.
"You're really going to the Tower?"
"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his
house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."
"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.
Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.
"Goose! let me go."
Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the
mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it
amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower--in one of
its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched
on a sofa--a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near--and in the
doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....
VIII
Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge
beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long
ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and
carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it
behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with
which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had
surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel
with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his
land.
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