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  He drew aside the crimson curtain and let the evening sun shine upon her. He walked softly to and fro in the saloon, and every time he passed her couch turned on her his ardent gaze. That man has now loved Mary Percy longer than he ever loved any woman before, and I daresay her face has by this time become to him a familiar and household face. It may be told, by the way in which his eye seeks the delicate and pallid features and rests on their lines, that he finds settled pleasure in the contemplation. In all moods, at all times, he likes them. Her temper is changeful; she is not continual sunshine; she weeps sometimes, and frets and teazes him not unfrequently with womanish jealousies. I don't think another woman lives on earth in whom he would bear these changes for a moment. From her, they almost please him. He finds an amusement in playing with her fears - piquing or soothing them as caprice directs.

  She slept still, but now he stoops to wake her. He separated her clasped hands and took one in his own. Disturbed by the movement, she drew that hand hastily and petulantly away, and turned on her couch with a murmur. He laughed, and the laugh woke her. Rising, she looked at him and smiled. Still she seemed weary, and when he placed himself beside her she dropped her head on his shoulder and would have slept again. But the Duke would not permit this: he was come for his evening's amusement, and his evening's amusement he would have, whether she was fit to yield it or not. In answer to his prohibitory and disturbing movements she said,

  'Adrian, I am tired.'

  'Too tired to talk to me?' he asked.

  'No, Adrian, but let me lean against you.'

  Still he held her off.

  'Come,' said he. 'Open your eyes and fasten your hair up; it is hanging on your neck like a mermaid's.' The Duchess raised her hand to her hair; it was indeed all loose and dishevelled over her shoulders. She got up to arrange it, and the occupation roused her. Having smoothed the auburn braids before a mirror, and touched and retouched her loosened dress till it resumed its usual aspect of fastidious neatness, she walked to the window.

  'The sun is gone,' said she. 'I am too late to see it set.' And she pensively smiled as her eye lingered on the soft glory which the sun, just departed, had left in its track. 'That is the West!' she exclaimed; and, turning to Zamorna, added quickly, 'What if you had been born a great imaginative Angrian?'

  'Well, I should have played the fool as I have done by marrying a little imaginative Senegambian.'

  'And,' she continued, talking half to herself and half to him, 'I should have had a very different feeling towards you then to what I have now. I should have fancied you cared nothing about my country so far off, with its wide wild woodlands. I should have thought all your heart was wrapt in this land, so fair and rich, teeming with energy and life, but still, Adrian, not with the romance of the West.'

  'And what do you think now, my Sappho?'

  'That you are not a grand awful foreigner absorbed in your kingdom as the grandest land of the earth, looking at me as an exotic, listening to my patriotic rhapsodies as sentimental dreams, but a son of Senegambia as I am a daughter - a thousand times more glorious to me, because you are the most glorious thing my own land ever flung from her fire-fertilized soil! I looked at you when those Angrians were howling round you today, and remembered that you were my countryman, not theirs - and all at once their alien senses, their foreign hearts, seemed to have discerned something uncongenial in you, the great stranger, and they rose under your control, yelling rebelliously.'

  'Mary!' exclaimed the Duke, laughingly approaching her. 'Mary, what ails you this evening? Let me look - is it the same quiet little winsome face I am accustomed to see?' He raised her face and gazed but she turned with a quick movement away.

  'Don't, Adrian. I have been dreaming about Percy Hall. When will you let me go there?'

  'Any time. Set off tonight if you please.'

  'That is nonsense, and I am serious. I must go sometime - but you never let [me] do anything I wish.'

  'Indeed! You dared not say so, if you were not far too much indulged.'

  'Let me go, and come with me in about a month when you have settled matters at Adrianopolis - promise, Adrian.'

  'I'll let you go willingly enough,' returned Zamorna, sitting down and beginning to look vexatious. 'But as for asking me to leave Angria again for at least a year and a day - none but an over-fondled wife would think of preferring an unreasonable request.'

  'It is not unreasonable, and I suppose you want me to leave you? I'd never allow you to go fifteen hundred miles if I could help it.'

  'No,' returned His Grace. 'Nor fifteen hundred yards either. You'd keep me like a china ornament in your drawing-room. Come, dismiss that pet! What is it all about?'

  'Adrian, you look so scornful.'

  He took up a book which lay in the window-seat, and began to read. The Duchess stood a while looking at him, and knitting her arched and even brows. He turned over page after page, and by the composure of his brow expressed interest in what he was reading and an intention to proceed. Her Grace is by no means the victim of caprice, though now and then she seems daringly to play with weapons few besides would venture to handle. On this occasion her tact, so nice as to be infallible, informed her that the pet was carried far enough. She sat down, then, by Zamorna's side; leant over and looked at the book; it was poetry - a volume of Byron. Her attention, likewise, was arrested; and she continued to read, turning the page with her slender [finger], after looking into the Duke's face at the conclusion of each leaf to see if he was ready to proceed. She was so quiet, her hair so softly fanned his cheek as she leaned her head towards him, the contact of her gentle hand now and then touching his, of her smooth and silken dress, was so endearing, that it quickly appeased the incipient ire her whim of perverseness had raised; and when, in about half an hour, she ventured to close the obnoxious volume and take it from his hand, the action met with no resistance - nothing but a shake of the head, half-reproving, half-indulgent.

  Little more was said by either Duke or Duchess, or at least their further conversation was audible to no mortal ear. The shades of dusk were gathering in the room; the very latest beam of sunset was passing from its gilded walls. They sat in the deep recess of the window side by side, a cloudless moon looking down from the sky upon them and lighting their faces with her smile. Mary leant her happy head on a breast she thought she might trust - happy in that belief, even though it were a delusion. Zamorna had been kind, even fond, and, for aught she knew, faithful, ever since their last blissful meeting at Adrianopolis, and she had learnt how to rest in his arms with a feeling of security, not trembling lest when she most needed the support it might all at once be torn away. During their late visit to Northangerland he had shewn her marked attention, conscious that tenderness bestowed on her was the surest method of soothing her father's heart, and words could not express half the rapture of her feelings when, more than once, seated between the Earl and Duke on such an evening as this, she had perceived that both regarded her as the light and hope of their lives. Language had not revealed this to her. Her father is a man of few words on sentimental matters; her husband, of none at all, though very vigorous in his actions; but Northangerland cheered in her presence, and Zamorna watched her from morning till night, following all her movements with a keen and searching glance.

  Is that Hannah Rowley tapping at the door? She says tea is [ready], and Mr Surena impatient to get into the shop again. Goodbye, reader.

  June 28th 1838

  BOCCACCIO * Mrs Rosie and the Priest

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS * As kingfishers catch fire

  The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY * On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE * Aphorisms on Love and Hate

  JOHN RUSKIN * Traffic

  PU SONGLING * Wailing Ghosts

  JONATHAN SWIFT * A Modest Proposal

  Three Tang Dynasty Poets

  WALT WHITMAN * On the Beach at Night Alone

  KENKO * A
Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

  BALTASAR GRACIAN * How to Use Your Enemies

  JOHN KEATS * The Eve of St Agnes

  THOMAS HARDY * Woman much missed

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT * Femme Fatale

  MARCO POLO * Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls

  SUETONIUS * Caligula

  APOLLONIUS OF RHODES * Jason and Medea

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON * Olalla

  KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS * The Communist Manifesto

  PETRONIUS * Trimalchio's Feast

  JOHANN PETER HEBEL * How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher's Dog

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN * The Tinder Box

  RUDYARD KIPLING * The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

  DANTE * Circles of Hell

  HENRY MAYHEW * Of Street Piemen

  HAFEZ * The nightingales are drunk

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER * The Wife of Bath

  MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE * How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

  THOMAS NASHE * The Terrors of the Night

  EDGAR ALLAN POE * The Tell-Tale Heart

  MARY KINGSLEY * A Hippo Banquet

  JANE AUSTEN * The Beautifull Cassandra

  ANTON CHEKHOV * Gooseberries

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE * Well, they are gone, and here must I remain

  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE * Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings

  CHARLES DICKENS * The Great Winglebury Duel

  HERMAN MELVILLE * The Maldive Shark

  ELIZABETH GASKELL * The Old Nurse's Story

  NIKOLAY LESKOV * The Steel Flea

  HONORE DE BALZAC * The Atheist's Mass

  CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN * The Yellow Wall-Paper

  C. P. CAVAFY * Remember, Body ...

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY * The Meek One

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT * A Simple Heart

  NIKOLAI GOGOL * The Nose

  SAMUEL PEPYS * The Great Fire of London

  EDITH WHARTON * The Reckoning

  HENRY JAMES * The Figure in the Carpet

  WILFRED OWEN * Anthem For Doomed Youth

  WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART * My Dearest Father

  PLATO * Socrates' Defence

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI * Goblin Market

  Sindbad the Sailor

  SOPHOCLES * Antigone

  RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA * The Life of a Stupid Man

  LEO TOLSTOY * How Much Land Does A Man Need?

  GIORGIO VASARI * Leonardo da Vinci

  OSCAR WILDE * Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

  SHEN FU * The Old Man of the Moon

  AESOP * The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon

  MATSUO BASHO * Lips too Chilled

  EMILY BRONTE * The Night is Darkening Round Me

  JOSEPH CONRAD * To-morrow

  RICHARD HAKLUYT * The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe

  KATE CHOPIN * A Pair of Silk Stockings

  CHARLES DARWIN * It was snowing butterflies

  BROTHERS GRIMM * The Robber Bridegroom

  CATULLUS * I Hate and I Love

  HOMER * Circe and the Cyclops

  D. H. LAWRENCE * Il Duro

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD * Miss Brill

  OVID * The Fall of Icarus

  SAPPHO * Come Close

  IVAN TURGENEV * Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands

  VIRGIL * O Cruel Alexis

  H. G. WELLS * A Slip under the Microscope

  HERODOTUS * The Madness of Cambyses

  Speaking of Siva

  The Dhammapada

  JANE AUSTEN * Lady Susan

  JEAN-JACQUES ROSSEAU * The Body Politic

  JEAN DE LA FONTAINE * The World is Full of Foolish Men

  H. G. WELLS * The Sea Raiders

  LIVY * Hannibal

  CHARLES DICKENS * To Be Read at Dusk

  LEO TOLSTOY * The Death of Ivan Ilyich

  MARK TWAIN * The Stolen White Elephant

  WILLIAM BLAKE * Tyger, Tyger

  SHERIDAN LE FANU * Green Tea

  The Yellow Book

  OLAUDAH EQUIANO * Kidnapped

  EDGAR ALLAN POE * A Modern Detective

  The Suffragettes

  MARGERY KEMPE * How To Be a Medieval Woman

  JOSEPH CONRAD * Typhoon

  GIACOMO CASANOVA * The Nun of Murano

  W. B. YEATS * A terrible beauty is born

  THOMAS HARDY * The Withered Arm

  EDWARD LEAR * Nonsense

  ARISTOPHANES * The Frogs

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE * Why I Am so Clever

  RAINER MARIA RILKE * Letters to a Young Poet

  LEONID ANDREYEV * Seven Hanged

  APHRA BEHN * Oroonoko

  LEWIS CARROLL * O frabjous day!

  JOHN GAY * Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London

  E. T. A. HOFFMANN * The Sandman

  DANTE * Love that moves the sun and other stars

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN * The Queen of Spades

  ANTON CHEKHOV * A Nervous Breakdown

  KAKUZO OKAKURA * The Book of Tea

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE * Is this a dagger which I see before me?

  EMILY DICKINSON * My life had stood a loaded gun

  LONGUS * Daphnis and Chloe

  MARY SHELLEY * Matilda

  GEORGE ELIOT * The Lifted Veil

  FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY * White Nights

  OSCAR WILDE * Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

  VIRGINIA WOOLF * Flush

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE * Lot No. 249

  The Rule of Benedict

  WASHINGTON IRVING * Rip Van Winkle

  Anecdotes of the Cynics

  VICTOR HUGO * Waterloo

  CHARLOTTE BRONTE * Stancliffe's Hotel

  littleblackclassics.com

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN CLASSICS

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  This edition published in Penguin Classics 2016

  Editorial matter copyright (c) Heather Glen, 2006

  The moral right of the editor has been asserted Text reproduced courtesy of The Bronte Parsonage Museum ISBN: 978-0-241-25171-3