And she loved. Loved madly, passionately, hopelessly.
He knew it. He knew that he had but to say, “Come!” and she would follow him to disgrace or death, to polar snows or deserts arid as Gehenna. To him she was nothing. No more than the painted fly he pinned in sport, than the yellow meadow flowers that he crushed beneath his heel, than the soft tender doves whose downy necks he wrung and whose bodies he eat with cruel relish.
[We regret to say that the rest of this contribution is improper, and unfit for publication.—Ed.]
From The Light Green. Cambridge, 1872.
The World prize competition, for parodies on Ouida’s Under Two Flags, subject “The Cambridgshire Stakes.”
First Prize.
‘Seven to 5 on Leoville; 9 to 3 on Lartington; 10 to 2 on Falmouth; 13 to 4 Flotsam; 17 to 9 Exeter; the Field bar one; 22 to 8 Lord Clive; 33 to 12 Discord! Take the Field bar one; take the Field!’ yelled a burly bookmaker, as an elegant young patrician redolent of Jockey Club sauntered past him.
‘I do take it in; also the Life,’ said the noble, as he flicked some dust from his spotless boots, and then he blew his nose gracefully.
‘O, stow yer larks!’ said the other; but the next moment he repented using such language; for the apparently delicate nobleman had carelessly taken him by the seat of his trousers and thrown him over the rails, as though he had been a feather, instead of weighing at least 15 stone.