Pauline\'s Passion and Punishment
PAULINE'S PASSION and PUNISHMENT Chapter I To and fro, like a wild creature in its cage, paced that handsome woman, with bent head, locked hands, and restless steps. Some mental storm, swift and sudden as a tempest of the tropics, had swept over her and left its marks behind. As if in anger at the beauty now proved powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A jewel glittered at her feet, leaving the lace rent to shreds on the indignant bosom that had worn it; the wreaths of hair that had crowned her with a woman's most womanly adornment fell disordered upon shoulders that gleamed the fairer for the scarlet of the pomegranate flowers clinging to the bright
below.
"Do you see anything?" asked Harry again.
"No, I can't say I do," Ned answered. "The place seems to
be deserted."
"Well, there was something there," insisted Harry. "Maybe
you aren't lookin' at the right place."
"Have a look yourself, then," suggested Ned, as he got
down, a task no more to his liking than the climb upward had
been.
Harry made easier work of it, being smaller and more used
to climbing trees, a luxury Ned had, perforce, denied
himself since going to work in the bank.
Harry peered about, and then, with a sigh that had in it
somewhat of disappointment, said:
"No; there's nothing there now. But I did see something."
"Are you sure?" asked Ned.
"Positive!" asserted the other.
PAULINE'S PASSION and PUNISHMENT Chapter I To and fro, like a wild creature in its cage, paced that handsome woman, with bent head, locked hands, and restless steps. Some mental storm, swift and sudden as a tempest of the tropics, had swept over her and left its marks behind. As if in anger at the beauty now proved powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A jewel glittered at her feet, leaving the lace rent to shreds on the indignant bosom that had worn it; the wreaths of hair that had crowned her with a woman's most womanly adornment fell disordered upon shoulders that gleamed the fairer for the scarlet of the pomegranate flowers clinging to the bright