eBooks Base 2000

The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events,
among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the
least exciting.--Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night,
about an hour after she and her father--standing under the portico--waved
reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him
and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to
Paris. This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing
than she had by any means prefigured. She had no notion beforehand what a
really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close
association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.
"We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib," she almost
tearfully assured him. "How we are going ever to live without you I
don't know."
And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of
forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a
kiss.


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