Suspense
By Henry Seton Merriman.
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To the truest gentleman I have met,
my father,
this book is dedicated.
Some there are who laugh and sing
While compassed round by sorrow;
To this ev’ning’s gloom they bring
The sunshine of tomorrow.
Suspense
Volume I
I
On Board the Hermione
“Brenda, what are you thinking about?”
It was hardly a question. The intonation of Mrs. Wylie’s voice was by no means interrogative, and she returned placidly to the perusal of her novel without awaiting a reply. The ladies had been reading silently for at least an hour, until the younger of the two allowed her book to lie unheeded on her knee, while the pages fluttered in the breeze.
The remark called forth by this action was accepted literally and as a question.
“I was thinking of Theo Trist,” replied the girl gravely. She did not meet her companion’s gaze, but looked wistfully across the fjord towards the bleak dismal cliffs.
Mrs. Wylie closed her novel on one white plump finger and drummed idly upon the back of it with the other hand. In movement and repose alike this lady was essentially comfortable. Her presence suggested contentment and prosperity amidst the most unpropitious environments. The Hermione, her temporary home, a broad, slow-sailing schooner-yacht, was, below decks, conducted on the principles of a luxurious, roomy house. She had a wonderful way with her, this plump and smiling lady, of diffusing into the very atmosphere a sense of readiness to meet all emergencies. The elements, even, seemed to bow to her. Overhead the winds might roar and moan aloud through stay and rigging—all around the waves might leap and throw themselves against the staunch low bulwarks of the yacht—but in the cabin was warm comfort; and with it, dainty womanly ways. Mrs. Wylie proved most effectually that at sea, in fair weather and in foul, a woman can be a woman still.
She now reopened her book, but instead of reading, sat gazing thoughtfully at the young girl. Presently she laughed musically and turned resolutely to the open page.
“Yes,” she murmured—confessing, as it were, that her thoughts had on former occasions been drawn in the same direction. “Yes. But, Brenda—I—should not advise you—to—think—of Theo Trist.”
There are in the lives of most of us passing moments which leave a distinct impression upon the mind. Of all the million words we hear there are some trivial remarks which hold fast to the inner sinews of the great machine we call memory—a machine which rests not by night or day, in health or sickness, in prosperity or woe. Often it is a jest, or some weighty saying spoken in jest. There is no apparent reason why some words should be so distinctly remembered while others pass away from recollection; and yet small observations, interesting only in the passing moment, catch as it were in the mental wheel, and, adhering to the spokes, spin round with them, just as a mere muddy piece of paper may cling to the wheel of an emperor’s carriage and flutter through the cheering crowd, calling for universal attention.
Brenda Gilholme listened to Mrs. Wylie’s laughing caution in a vague way, and there seemed to come into her mind an indefinite recollection. Certain it was that she had never heard the words before, but yet they
