ABANDONED گئی کا CHAPTER I THE WEDDING ISS LUCRETIA LANE stood at the toilet-glass in her bedroom in Chepstow Place, Bayswater, dressing herself for her marriage. She was watched from the embrace of an armchair by a young lady who was to accompany her to the church, and who was dressed for the solemnity. How? In a hat and jacket and skirt, for this was to be a very simple ceremony, and Miss Lucretia was putting on her hat and thrusting pins into it, and toying with it as ladies do with their head-gear when they adjust it, whilst her friend sat and watched her. Miss Lane was a handsome, tall, well-proportioned, finely-moulded young woman, aged twenty-four, with dark red hair, large shining brown eyes, a little Roman nose, a firm mouth with red lips, a throat of a rich whiteness, close-seated ears, delicately tinted like certain beautiful shells, a low, square, tranquil brow, dark and clearly pencilled eyebrows, white, ivory-bright, even teeth, rather small hands, the fingers long and nervous, and the nails so shaped that, taking them with the ears, and a certain delicacy in the carving of the lineaments of her face, you would have guessed she had a strain of good old blood in her. The other girl, Miss Constance Ford, takes so small a part in this story that there is no occasion to say more about her than name her. "You had better make haste," said Miss Ford. "Do you know what the time is? I am certain that was Major Stroud who knocked some minutes ago. What makes you linger and pause so? Don't you feel well, Lucretia ?" Lucretia turned her head slowly, brought her fine eyes to bear upon her friend, and said, with a slight frown and in a note of temper "Don't tease me!" Miss Ford stepped to the window and looked out. It was Wednesday, in September, 1890. Villas over the way, dull sky with shadows of fog looking like rainclouds hanging over the pointing fingers on the chimneystacks; a piano organ under the window began to play "Auld Robin Gray." Miss Ford started to sing; she sang audibly, with her face averted and her eyes screwed into their corners upon Lucretia. "My father argued sair-my mother did'na speak, But she look'd me in the face till my heart was like to break; Lucretia went on fiddling with her hat. What ailed the girl? Was she going to be married to Auld Robin Gray? Was her heart in the sea? How should a young woman look whilst she is dressing, or being helped to dress, for her wedding? She is taking a momentous step; the event is the most significant that can happen to her in all her days. It is more heavily |