: Madame Margot: A grotesque legend of old Charleston by Bennett John - Fantasy fiction; Charleston (S.C.) Fiction; Mothers and daughters Fiction; Happiness Fiction; Soul Fiction

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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and high pride.

Gabrielle, startled and terrified, shrank back against the magnolia's black bole, one trembling, hesitant hand extended in doubt. Speechless she stared at that bright, boyish face with its nimbus of sunlit, yellow hair, until her dry eyes gushed tears, dimming her sight,--stared in wonder and adoration.

His eyes were audaciously bright as wild stars, incessantly roving, and alight with golden fire. He was tall, well-set and slender, with a beautiful, straight body; there was something godlike in his air as he leaned through the matted hedge, eagerly scanning her,--her pale rose cheeks, snowy gown, moth-green kerchief, her lips, her neck matching the ivory of the blossoms in her hair,--half-veiled by a screen of leafy green, dull gold and pomegranate flowers.

She had bound her hair with a bit of gold braid which shone like an aureole round her brow, and in it had thrust two butterfly lilies, whiter than ivory; her eyes were wide open, round and unwinking, their frightened depths full of tears; her lips had fallen slightly apart to free her fluttering breath; she sighed, a little, shuddering sigh, and crossed her hands upon her breast. Her beauty startled him: delicate-frail, almost translucent in the golden sun, she seemed a being not of flesh and gross mortality, but a spirit by enchantment made visible, a dryad out of the ancient wood, a maiden saint stepped out of a missal or fled from a chapel window, with a halo around her brow. With her head poised like a flower; her little, perfect hands and feet; her ankles slim and beautiful; each line aristocratic; everything proclaiming patrician blood; nothing asserting a baser thing: saint, maid, dryad, nymph, or sprite, who could tell which?

Silently drinking her loveliness he leaned through the hedge. Among the fire-colored flowers and green, her color was exquisite as the violet sky is, seen through yellow leaves.

Again she sighed softly; stared at his face, and shivered a little. Was it a god or a man in the hedge? Had he sprouted out of the boxwood, or fallen from the clouds?

The perfect beauty of her figure, outlined on green by her thin white gown, charmed and enchanted him. He stared at her, trying to focus her face more clearly upon his sight; her loveliness struck him dumb. She seemed a statue of ivory, hung with garlands of gold, crimson and green, half-hidden by a rood-screen of shimmering emerald. It seemed to him that he looked on more than mortal beauty.

Leaning forward a little, one hand outstretched, one clasping her throat, she watched his face with its golden hair aglow in the last red sunlight. How could she tell if it were a god or a man,--that face with its shimmering locks like living fire around it, a gleaming nimbus whose dancing flames were fashioned of burnished gold, a face like a blazing seraph's, or Ariel's? She looked at that proud young countenance in wordless adoration.

Her own face was now intensely bright with the sunset's declining glory. Into the crevice between her lips the sunshine had slipped; her lips were translucent; her mouth was aglow as if she breathed ethereal fire.

Suddenly he drew his breath with a sharply audible sound; for, as he gazed, longing seized the boy's heart and wrung it bitterly.

The flame which blazed in his bright eyes put an answering glow in her own. She was aware that her beauty had startled him. For the first time in her life she was awake to her own loveliness, a sense wonderful and sweet. A delicate, throbbing fire came fluttering up through her breast; a flush stole into her cheeks and warmed their ashy pallor. Her eyes met his: in his eyes were joy, surprise, and longing. His eyes met hers: and all her doubts went out in wordless joy. For, when she perceived that look in his face, she, too, was thrilled with longing; the silence sang; fire thrilled her heart; suddenly neck and cheeks flamed red.

She answered his look with glorious eyes, humid, terrified, alight. Then her frightened eyes fell and her shy face. But, like a wave which breaks along a beach in a passionate surge, her heart rushed out to greet him.

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