Lady Glendonwyn Author:James Grant General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1881 Original Publisher: Tinsley brothers Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ca... more »n select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. THE WATCHER. Meanwhile, despite the pain of the interview in the lane, Lenora who had discarded him -- given him " his most necessary conge," as her somewhat frigid mamma phrased it -- was sleeping soundly with her soft cheek reposing on the downiest of down pillows; but there was one who waited and watched anxiously for the absent Alan -- his fond old mother in her cosy parlour at Etherton Grange, a quaint and antique house of the Stuart times, embosomed in a wooded hollow; a house all gables and beams of oak, that were imbedded in brick and plaster, running diagonally through the walls and propping all manner of bold outshots and overhangingeaves, about which the clustering ivy and clematis clambered. It was one of those picturesque old mansions, which are suggestive of old English customs, traditions, of hospitable and unsophisticated country life. The hour by which Alan should long since have been home was long past now, and the night, as we have described, had fast and suddenly become a wild and tempestuous one. . Was the clock fast ? Her watch was fully ten minutes slower; which was right ? The last she hoped; yet as hour followed hour, these ten minutes, so fondly reckoned on and clung to, ceased to be of consequence at all. Had he met a friend -- encountered some unforeseen accident -- or what ? His horse knew every foot of the way, and thus, even had he lost his rider, would have found the path homeward long since. Haggard anxiety began to spread over the sweet and soft features of her comely old face, and she grew fearful of questioning o...« less