Explore "Rose of the World" by Egerton Castle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For the life of her Baby could not have said why, but she felt as if something had been broken by these last words -- broken with a great crash. She put down her glass and turned and stared from her aunt to Major Bethune and back again. Lady Gerardine's eyes were cast down, her hands were moving among the tea-things: it would have been hard to divine if she had even heard. The man was leaning forward, devouring her face with unsparing gaze -- a gaze that seemed to be looking for something with brutal intensity.
After a silence, so oppressive that Aspasia could have screamed, Lady Gerardine spoke: