Wind's will Author:Agnes Castle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI THE WALTZ AT THE ENGLISH EMBASSY AfGUSTA, you'll drive me mad!" said the young man. "If you please, Geoffrey, do not speak so loud. I feel ce... more »rtain you will be overheard." "I don't care," cried he recklessly. "I don't care who overhears. You promised me " "You're quite mistaken. I never promised anything. You asserted that I was to dance the waltz with no one but you; I don't think I answered at all." "Oh, yes, you did. In a dozen sweet ways you said yes. Good God! you smiled, you let me take your hand, press it. You—you said we should talk it over next time we met." "And you certainly said you would be riding in the Bois, this morning." Geoffrey Swifte looked thunderstruck. "But I was there!" he panted. Augusta de Vyne's delicate little mouth had a faint smile of incredulity. "You were not visible, sir." "It is true I was kept rather late " "Ah!" "You were there!—You were there! You were looking for me!" "It is my grandmother's favorite drive. Eleven to twelve is her hour." "I was at the Porte d'Auteuil before half-past eleven." "Were you indeed?—I believe Lady Maldon and I were back at the Porte de Neuilly much about that time." "Oh, Augusta! It was no fault of mine." The young officer clutched his curly head with an air of desperation. One would have thought that round these two trifling questions—partnership for the new dance and a meeting missed in a morning ride—the whole happiness of life hung. Perhaps it did. The girl was not nineteen, the boy not twenty-four. There is a spring madness born of the essential folly of youth, in which the fairest promises may be destroyed in a single hour as the orchard by an April storm. Geoffrey Swifte had an ardent, jealous temper. Augusta de Vyne—trembling between ambition...« less