Read "Sons of Fire, Volume III" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The deep-toned organ pealed through the empty manor-house in the gloom of a rainy summer afternoon. Not once in the long dull day had the sun looked through the low, dull sky; and Mrs. Wornock, always peculiarly sensible of every change in the atmosphere, felt that life was just a little sadder and emptier than it had been for her in all the long slow years of a lonely widowhood.
What had she to live for? The brief romance of her girlhood was all she had ever known of the love which for most women means a life history. For her it had been only the beginning of a chapter -- ending in self-sacrifice, as blind and piteously faithful to duty as Abraham's obedience to the Divine command. And after all those years of fond fidelity to a memory, she had seen her lover again -- once for a few minutes -- by stealth, through an open window, undreamt of by him.