That is when I am still young, and given to fancies. When I am older I do not walk by the river so much as stand at the windows of the house and gaze at where I know the water flows. I stand at my own casement, for many hours at a time. And in the yellow paint that covers the glass of the windows of my uncle''s library I one day, with my finger-nail, make a small and perfect crescent, to which I afterwards occasionally lean and place my eye—like a curious wife at the keyhole of a cabinet of secrets.
But I am inside the cabinet, and long to get out. . .
I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.
Chapter Eight⑨本⑨作⑨品⑨由⑨思⑨兔⑨網⑨提⑨供⑨線⑨上⑨閱⑨讀⑨
I have said it was my uncle''s custom, occasionally to invite interested gentlemen to the house, to take a supper with us and, later, hear me read. He does so now.
''Make yourself neat tonight, Maud,'' he says to me, as I stand in his library buttoning up my gloves. ''We shall have guests. Hawtrey, Huss, and another fellow, a stranger. I hope to employ him with the mounting of our pictures.''
Our pictures. There are cabinets, in a separate study, filled with drawers of lewd engravings, that my uncle has collected in a desulto