"Bulwer_Lytton_the_Incantation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bulwer-Lytton Edward George)

Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my solemn
completeness of man? Perhaps, in great capitals, young men of
pleasure will answer, "It is youth; and we think what he says!"
Young friends, I do not believe you.


II


Along the grass track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a
strange procession--never seen before in Australian pastures. It
moved on, noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and
met it on the way; a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar
Eastern garments; two other servitors, more bravely dressed, with
yataghans and silver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this
somber equipage. Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought
that passed through my mind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he
said with a hollow, bitter laugh that had replaced the lively peal
of his once melodious mirth:

"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too,
will have the tastes of a pasha."

I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my
tempter. To me his whole being was resolved into one problem: had
he a secret by which death could be turned from Lilian?

But now, as the litter halted, from the long, dark shadow which it
cast upon the turf, the figure of a woman emerged and stood before
us. The outlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a
black mantle, and the features of her face were hidden by a black
veil, except only the dark-bright, solemn eyes. Her stature was
lofty, her bearing majestic, whether in movement or repose.

Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me. She replied
in what seemed to me the same tongue. The tones of her voice were
sweet, but inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered
appeared intended to warn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they
called to Margrave's brow a lowering frown, and drew from his lips
a burst of unmistakable anger. The woman rejoined, in the same
melancholy music of voice. And Margrave then, leaning his arm upon
her shoulder, as he had leaned it on mine, drew her away from the
group into a neighboring copse of the flowering eucalypti--mystic
trees, never changing the hues of their pale-green leaves, ever
shifting the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark. For some
moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the glinting
moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. Then turning away my
eyes, I saw, standing close at my side, a man whom I had not
noticed before. His footstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on the