Star of India by Alice Perrin (ereader ebook txt) 📗

"Not yet," she assured him. "I don't mean to die young."

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Philip Flint walked up the short drive to The Chestnuts. The air was filled with the peace and the scent of the summer's evening; and as he viewed the old house with its little paved terrace, the lawn sloping down to the stream, the cedar tree, the red wall of the kitchen garden, he felt that it was all familiar to him.

An old lady was seated on the terrace flags—that would be "Grandmamma"; and an austere-looking female emerged from one of the French windows to speak to the old lady—was that Aunt Augusta, or Aunt Ellen? His heart warmed towards them. And as he hesitated, hardly daring to go[Pg 314] forward, he caught sight of a form stretched on a long chair beneath the cedar tree.

Boldly he took a short cut through the shrubs. At the sound of his footsteps she looked up, gave a little cry, hid her dear, maimed face in her hands. Stella—his beloved, his star, his Star of India!

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