The High Heart   By: Basil King (1859-1928)

[BASIL KING]

THE HIGH HEART. Illustrated. THE LIFTED VEIL. Illustrated. THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS. Illustrated. THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT. Illustrated. THE WAY HOME. Illustrated. THE WILD OLIVE. Illustrated. THE INNER SHRINE. Illustrated. THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT. Illustrated. LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER. Post 8vo. IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY. Post 8vo. THE STEPS OF HONOR. Post 8vo. THE GIANT'S STRENGTH. Post 8vo.

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK Established 1817

[Illustration: "I've been thinking a good deal during the past few weeks of your law of Right"]

THE HIGH HEART

BY BASIL KING

AUTHOR OF " The Inner Shrine " " The Lifted Veil " Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON

The High Heart

Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1917

ILLUSTRATIONS

"I've Been Thinking a Good Deal During the Past Few Weeks of Your Law of Right" Frontispiece

The Marriage She Had Missed Was on Her Mind. It Created an Obsession or a Broken Heart, I Wasn't Quite Sure Which Facing p. 118

I Saw a Man and a Woman Consumed with Longing for Each Other " 192

"I've Had Great Trials . . . I've Always Been Misjudged. . . . They've Put Me Down as Hard and Proud" " 410

THE HIGH HEART

CHAPTER I

I could not have lived in the Brokenshire circle for nearly a year without recognizing the fact that in the eyes of his family J. Howard, as he was commonly called by the world, was the Great Dispenser; but my first intimation that he meant to act in that capacity toward me came from Larry Strangways, on a bright July morning during the summer of 1913, when we were at Newport.

I was crossing the lawn, going toward the sea, with little Gladys Rossiter, to whom I acted as companion in the hours when she was out of the nursery, with a specific duty to speak French. Larry Strangways was tutor to the Rossiter boy, and in our relative positions we were bound to exercise toward each other a good deal of discretion. We fraternized with constraint. We fraternized because well, chiefly because we couldn't help it. In the mocking flare of his eye, which contradicted the assumed young gravity of his manner, I read an opinion of the Rossiter household and of the Brokenshire family in general similar to my own. That would have been enough for mutual comprehension had there been no instinctive sympathies between us; but there were. Allowing for the fact that we were of different nationalities, we had the same kind of antecedents; we spoke the same kind of social language; we had the same kind of aims in life. Neither of us regarded the position in the Rossiter establishment as a permanent status. He was a tutor merely for the minute, while feeling his way to that first rung of the ladder which I was convinced would lead him to some high place in American life. I was a nursery governess only on the way to getting married. Matrimony was the continent toward which more or less consciously I had been traveling for five or six years, without having actually descried a port. In this connection I may relate a little incident which had taken place between myself and Mrs. Rossiter after I had accepted my situation in her family. It will retard my meeting with Larry Strangways on the lawn, but it will throw light on it when it comes.