The Project Gutenberg eBook, Grey Roses, by Henry Harland

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Title: Grey Roses

Author: Henry Harland

Release Date: April 29, 2005 [eBook #15733]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREY ROSES***

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GREY ROSES

by

HENRY HARLAND

By the same Author

The Cardinal's Snuff-Box
Comedies and Errors
The Lady Paramount
Mademoiselle Miss

John Lane, The Bodley Head, London
John Lane Company, New York
Fifth Edition
Presswork by the University Press
John Wilson and Son . Cambridge, U.S.A.

1911

_'Yes, the conception was a rose,
but the achievement is a rose
grown grey.'_--PARASCHKINE

CONTENTS

THE BOHEMIAN GIRL

MERCEDES

A BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS

THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

A RE-INCARNATION

FLOWER O' THE QUINCE

WHEN I AM KING

A RESPONSIBILITY

CASTLES NEAR SPAIN

I.

I woke up very gradually this morning, and it took me a little while
to bethink myself where I had slept--that it had not been in my own
room in the Cromwell Road. I lay a-bed, with eyes half-closed,
drowsily look looking forward to the usual procession of sober-hued
London hours, and, for the moment, quite forgot the journey of
yesterday, and how it had left me in Paris, a guest in the smart new
house of my old friend, Nina Childe. Indeed, it was not until somebody
tapped on my door, and I roused myself to call out 'Come in,' that I
noticed the strangeness of the wall-paper, and then, after an instant
of perplexity, suddenly remembered. Oh, with a wonderful lightening of
the spirit, I can tell you.

A white-capped, brisk young woman, with a fresh-coloured, wholesome
peasant face, came in, bearing a tray--Jeanne, Nina's femme-de-chambre.

'Bonjour, monsieur,' she cried cheerily. 'I bring monsieur his
coffee.' And her announcement was followed by a fragrance--the
softly-sung response of the coffee-sprite. Her tray, with its pretty
freight of silver and linen, primrose butter, and gently-browned
pain-de-gruau, she set down on th