and sat staring at the fire

and sat staring at the fire

A vague restlessness took possession of Catherine that night, when she was left alone in the silent house. She had sent the servants to bed, and drawing a chair before the fire, tried to forget herself in the pages of romance. Color and passion had no glamour for her in print, however. It was as though some silent watcher stood behind her chair, and willed her to brood on thoughts that troubled her heart university financial assistance.

She put the book aside at last, , listening to the wind that moaned and sobbed about the house. The curtains swayed before the windows, and she could hear the elm-trees in the garden groaning as though weary of the day’s unrest. There was something in the nature of the night that gave a sombre setting to her thoughts. She remembered her husband’s tired and jaded face, and her very loneliness enhanced her melancholy kbox 70w.

The Dutch clock in the hall struck eleven, the antique whir of wheels sounding strange in the sleeping house. Catherine stirred the fire together, rose and put out the lamp. She lit her candle in the hall, leaving a light burning there, and climbed the stairs slowly to her room. Instinct led her to cross the landing and enter the nursery where her children slept.

The two little beds stood one in either corner beside the fireplace, each headed by some favorite picture, and covered with red quilts edged with white. Gwen was sleeping with a doll beside her, her hair tied up with a blue ribbon. The boy had a box of soldiers on the bed, and one fist cuddled a brass cannon.

Catherine stood and looked at them with a mother’s tenderness in her eyes. They spelled life to her—these little ones, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. They were her husband’s children, and they seemed to bring into her heart that night a deep rush of tenderness towards the man who had given her motherhood. All the joy and sorrow that they had shared together stole up like the odor of a sacrifice hotel management trainee.