The Cripple of Antioch Author:Elizabeth Rundle Charles 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 II. rpHE next day was a festival in Antioch. Peo- -1 pie thronged to the gardens by the Orontes, to sacrifice in the temples there. The city was brill... more »iant with garlands, and tapestries, and gorgeous processions. Graia had gone out to take care of the house of a family who were keeping holiday. No processions ever passed down the lane in which Victoria lived. She sometimes crept up to the corner, or watched them pass a little way off; but to-day was one of her days of greatest suffering, and the lame girl sate by the window and embroidered, finding little luxury in an idleness which only threw her more drearily on herself. A holiday to her was simply a void. As the sate there, a little stir in the street aroused her; and looking up she saw a magnificent chariot draw up at the Lady Ione's door. The horses, with their necks reined in to a proud curve, the classical form of the chariot, and the beautiful, joyous face of the lady, as she waved a farewell to her children at the door, beamed like a vision of the gods on Victoria; and as the horses pranced away, they left her in darkness, as if it had been a chariot of the sun. Before she resumed her work the little lane was again in motion; and from a low door at the corner issued Xystus, the carpenter, his three daughters, and his son, a fine sun-browned man, lately returned from a prosperous voyage, which accounted for the brilliant attire of the sisters. Xystus and Graia were far too close neighbours not to be enemies—the carpenter having, moreover, a temper which Graia could never resist the luxury of taunting mto an explosion ; and there were various standing grievances between them concerning rights of water and way, which excluded all intercourse between the young people. But now, as they went up the lane laughing and d...« less