Explore "Adrien Leroy" by Charles Garvice on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
But that night Adrien Leroy could not sleep. Dismissing his valet, he threw himself into a chair, and began to review the events of the day, which had affected him more deeply than he would confess to. Then the mere sight of Lady Constance with Lord Standon had convinced him that any hope of ever winning her for his wife was at an end. For so many years had he himself been wooed and sought after, without response, that he was as ignorant of the rules of the game of love as any child. Love! he had sneered at it, jested at its power all his life; but now he was beginning to suffer from its pangs himself. He rose hastily, and throwing open the window of his dressing room, stepped out on the balcony.
It was an exquisite night, and the stars shone like diamonds. Yet their very distance and detachment from all things earthly only served to deepen Adrien's melancholy. Before him stretched, in seemingly endless vista, the woods and lands of his heritage. As far as eye could reach, the earth and all within it and upon it belonged to him; and yet he sighed for the love and devotion of one frail girl, which, had he but known, were already his.