THE SORCERESS.
THE SORCERESS.
A Novel.
BY
M R S. O L I P H A N T,
AUTHOR OF
“THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,”
“THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST,”
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
F. V. WHITE & Co.,
31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1893.
(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)
PRINTED BY
TILLOTSON AND SON, BOLTON,
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BERLIN.
| CONTENTS: I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., XIX. |
THE SORCERESS.
CHAPTER I.
When Charlie Kingsward fled from Oxford, half mad with disappointmentand misery, he had no idea or intention about the future left in hismind. He had come to one of those strange passes in life beyond whichthe imagination does not go. He had been rejected with that deepestcontumely which takes the aspect of the sweetest kindness, when a womanaffects the most innocent suspicion at the climax to which, consciouslyor unconsciously, she has been working up.{2}
“Oh, my poor boy, was that what you were thinking of?” There is no wayin which a blow can be administered with such sharp and keen effect. Itmade the young man’s brain, which was only an ordinary brain, and forsome time had exercised but small restraining power upon him in thehurry and sweep of his feelings, reel. When he pulled the door upon himof those gardens of Aminda, that fool’s paradise in which he had beenwasting his youth, and which were represented in his case by a veryordinary suburban garden in that part of Oxford called the Parks, hisrejected and disappointed passion had every possible auxiliary emotionto make it unbearable. Keen mortification, humiliation, the sharp senseof being mocked and deceived; the sudden conviction of having given whatseemed to the half-maddened boy his whole life, for nothing whipped himlike the lashes of the Furies. In most of the crises of life the thoughtwhat to do next occurs with almost the rapidity of lightning after agreat catastrophe, but Charlie felt as if there was nothing beyond. Thewhole world had crumbled about him. There{3} was no next step; his veryfooting had failed him.