Devil's Tor Read Online Free

the one hand and unpleasing strength on the other. Her long mouth was strange and lovely; it might be passionate, but he could not imagine her sexual. Her grey-blue eyes, in their perfect orbits, were the hardest of all to decipher. Superficially they struck one as tranquil, quiet and simple, but then something waiting in them began to appear, and at last one might suspect that they were essentially not in the present at all. They might be the eyes of a prophetess, going about her every-day jobs. It gave a marvellous latent power to the whole face.
    And her true nature was so very much a paradox to him. Such a fair, clever and favoured young only daughter of a well-to-do household might far too easily be spoilt; and Ingrid appeared unspoilt. Her amiability at all times and unquestioning obedience to the practical suggestions of the others in the same house were even quite extraordinary for any girl. She also helped her mother in everything as a dutiful and feminine-souled home-staying daughter should. She did it all seemingly without effort or self-conflict, yet it could not be her character. Probably she was content to conserve her strength for the later bigger things of life; and perhaps that explained the quiet inward expectation of her eyes.
    Biologically singular it was to note how she had reverted to the pure Nordic type, which had totally skipped her mother above her in the direct line; while Dick Fleming, the father, a capital good fellow, had been a true-blue Britisher. Ingrid's race was in her complexion, the fairest and most unblemished ever seen. Certainly the moist, cool, fragrant Dartmoor winds and mists must have been kind to it, still no mere Saxon blonde could have possessed such a skin even to start with. It was the legacy of long ages of snow and ice. She was twenty-two, and, chit-chat apart, must soon think seriously of marriage.
    Helga, her mother, was his first-cousin. Her wedded life had been of the shortest, for Dick, her husband (a small, nimble, fresh-complexioned chap with a pointed little beard; Drapier had met him) had broken his neck in the hunting-field when Ingrid was still hardly out of her alphabet. Ever since, Helga had kept house for Magnus Colborne, her uncle and his, who presumably would leave mother and daughter all his worldly goods when he should depart. And he was already past seventy, and to all appearance going fast downhill. No doubt Helga had something of her own put by, but it was quite understandable why she should prefer a soft home with this temporary sacrifice of independence to a grind-along on insufficient means. Already she was the virtual mistress of the place. No one could grudge Helga Fleming the highest good fortune.
    A sudden hail-shower began, slackened awhile, then without warning descended as a tropical sheet of hissing white rain, instantaneously drenching them through and through. Ingrid stopped, turned to laugh at Hugh, flung the wet from the locks over her ears, and, with a gay exclamation he failed to catch, started again to run up the hill, only a few yards of which could be seen in front of them. It was like the end of the world. To hasten their panic, a fierce blaze of violet light flashed out from the sky just above, illuminating the rain and the moor with its enduring flicker; then, before it ceased, there sounded a sharp, sickening, tearing noise, as of cloth being violently rent, followed immediately by a deafening and appalling crash which left them aghast. The rain affected them as if full of electricity, while Drapier fancied that he detected the smell of singeing. Perhaps a part of the turf had been struck and burned. When the downpour had moderated somewhat, a cool breeze seemed to spring up, but it was deceptive, the air continued as close and oppressive as before. The storm, far from having exhausted itself, had hardly yet begun.
    For company's sake they now pressed forward side-by-side. "We're not likely to get a nearer one than that," Drapier