[The Danger Mark by Robert W. Chambers]@TWC D-Link book
The Danger Mark

CHAPTER XII
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Kathleen and I found three the other day--one a regular beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and copper tinted wing-covers.

Do you want to help me hunt for some more?
You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards." Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined.

Later she opened a shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves without exciting comment.
But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the valley.

Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which linked the days of every summer for her.

But Stuyvesant had not arrived; and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not too drunk to remember her.
So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on the remoter hills--not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the stolen glance.
As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him--who were not listening--that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards.
Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.
"How's Sis ?" he inquired.
"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.
"Could I see her ?" he asked.
Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time.


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