The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley

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Title: Prisoners
Fast Bound In Misery And Iron

Author: Mary Cholmondeley

Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18834]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT
CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"]

PRISONERS

FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON

By

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Author of_

"Red Pottage"

"But for failing of love on our
part, therefore is all our travail."

--JULIAN OF NORWICH.

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMVI

Copyright, 1905, 1906, by

COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1906, by

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Published, September, 1906_

To
My Brother
Reginald

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically
because it contained ... the man of
whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_

"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_
words" _Page_ 36

"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden
passion" " 46

"'You are all blinder one than the other, that
it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80

"If Fay had come in then he would have killed
her, done her to death with the chains he
had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146

"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly
Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders
were" " 184

CHAPTER I

Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you,
And fairies brought their offerings at your birth;
You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due,
Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth.

--ARTHUR C. LEGGE.

Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at
Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little
compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome.

How small it looked, what a hud