The Lovely Mrs Blake Author:Richard Marsh General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1910 Original Publisher: Cassell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select ... more »from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VII Mr. Blake's Love Story Three days passed. Gilbert Watson was still at The Beeches, though he had not again seen the young lady with the eyes, nor found himself within convenient distance of Rogate. So many things had happened, and so quickly, that just what he had feared had come about, and he found himself drawn into a tangle from which, with any semblance of grace, he could not easily escape. Nothing had been heard of the missing lady, and so extraordinary an effect had this had upon George Blake that, almost in self defence, Mr. Watson had felt constrained to make an effort to get at what was at the back of that gentleman's mind. And, in a measure, he had got there, in the course of the strangest interview he had ever had in his life. It took place at dead of night -- the third night after Watson's coming. All day the air had been charged with electricity, and worse ; over and over again he had upbraided himself for having been such a fool as to have stayed; and now that the night had come, the inclination to indulge in self-reproach had become more pronounced. He could not sleep ; either his imagination played him the maddest tricks, or the house was full of the most fantastic noises. Indeed, he had not had any sleep to speak of in the two nights he had occupied that room, and as a consequence on that third night his nerves were all on edge; he was so much in want of sleep that he knew it would not come. He had got between the sheets, but he might just as well have stayed outside for any rest which came to him. The room, like the rest of the house, was li...« less