Jeniffer electronic book

"
"_Not_ father?" cried the girl; "you know it was not?"
"I _know_ it was not."
The voice again was not the voice of one who brings glad tidings, but
the words were themselves full of gladness for the ear on which they
fell, and Rotha seemed almost overcome by her joy. She clutched
Ralph's arm with both hands.
"Heaven be praised!" she said; "now I can brave anything--poor, poor
father!"
After this the girl almost leapt over the frozen road in the ecstasy
of her new-found delight. The weight of weary months of gathering
suspense seemed in one moment to have fallen from her forever. Half
laughing, half weeping, she bounded along, the dog sporting beside
her. Her quick words rippled on the frosty air. Occasionally she
encountered a flood that swept across the way from the hills above to
the lake beneath, but her light foot tripped over it before a hand
could be offered her. Their path lay along the pack-horse road by the
side of the mere, and time after time she would scud down to the
water's edge to pluck the bracken that grew there, or to test the thin
ice with her foot.


Pages:
69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93