Project Gutenberg's The Tempting of Tavernake, by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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Title: The Tempting of Tavernake

Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5091]
Posting Date: June 12, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TEMPTING OF TAVERNAKE ***

Produced by Polly Stratton

THE TEMPTING OF TAVERNAKE

By E. Phillips Oppenheim

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I. DESPAIR AND INTEREST

They stood upon the roof of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood
of Russell Square--one of those grim shelters, the refuge of
Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl--she represented
the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy
expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the
uninspiring panorama. The young man--unmistakably, uncompromisingly
English--stood with his back to the chimney a few feet away, watching
his companion. The silence between them was as yet unbroken, had lasted,
indeed, since she had stolen away from the shabby drawing-room below,
where a florid lady with a raucous voice had been shouting a music-hall
ditty. Close upon her heels, but without speech of any sort, he had
followed. They were almost strangers, except for the occasional word or
two of greeting which the etiquette of the establishment demanded. Yet
she had accepted his espionage without any protest of word or look. He
had followed her with a very definite object. Had she surmised it,
he wondered? She had not turned her head or vouchsafed even a single
question or remark to him since he had pushed his way through the
trap-door almost at her heels and stepped out on to the leads. Yet it
seemed to him that she must guess.

Below them, what seemed to be the phantasm of a painted city, a
wilderness of housetops, of smoke-wreathed spires and chimneys,
stretched away to a murky, blood-red horizon. Even as they stood there,
a deeper color stained the sky, an angry sun began to sink into the
piled up masses of thick, vaporous clouds. The girl watched with an air
of sullen yet absorbed interest. Her companion's eyes were still fixed
wholly an