They opened the stolen book, and sat down together so close that their arms were interlaced, and their cheeks touched as they read.
It was a terrible picture, that meagre, dimly-lighted room, the tree-boughs waving against the window, their leaves vocal with the last sob of the storm, and those two women with their keen evil faces, their lips parted with eagerness, and their eyes gleaming darkly, as they drank up the secrets of poor Mabel Harrington's life.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OLD HEADS AND YOUNG HEARTS.
General Harrington spent the entire day at home. After the rather uncomfortable breakfast we have already described, he went to his library, discontented and moody. All day he was disposed to be restless and dissatisfied with his books, as he had been with the appointments of his morning meal. Indignant with his whole household, for not being on the alert to amuse him, he declined going down to dinner; but ordering some choicely cooked birds and a bottle of champagne in his own room, amused his rather fastidious appetite with these delicacies, while he luxuriated in his dressing-gown, and read snatches from a new book of poems that had interested him for the moment.
This rather pleasant occupation wiled away an hour, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Lifting his eyes from the book, the General said, "Come in," rather hastily, for the knock had broken into one of the finest passages of the poem, and General Harrington detested interruptions of any kind, either in a mental or sensual enjoyment.
"Come in!"
The General was a good deal astonished when his son Ralph opened the door, and stood before him with an air of awkward constraint, that would certainly have secured him a reprimand had he not been the first to speak.
"Father!"
General Harrington gave an impatient wave of the hand.