This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...while Desire laughingly attended to her dishevelled hair. Why not? Because you still make your own dresses and teach dancing, replied the pupil, with a quick sigh at the thought of some smart bursch in the Prussian contingent. Ah, but Charles will return a colonel, and I shall bow to you in a silk dress from a chaise and pair--come, left foot first. You are not so tired as you think you are. For those that are busy, time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else assuredly the hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the overfed few. August succeeded a hot July and brought with it Sebastians curt letter. Sebastian himself--that shadowy father--returned to his home a few hours later. He was not alone, for a heavier step followed his into the passage, and Desiree, always quick to hear and see and act, coming to the head of the stairs perceived her father looking upwards towards her, while his companion in rough sailors clothes turned to lay aside the valise he had carried on his shoulder. Mathilde was close behind Desiree, and Sebastian kissed his daughters with that cold repression of manner which always suggested a strenuous past in which the emotions had been relinquished for ever as an indulgence unfit for a stern and hard-bitten age. I took him away and now return him, said the sailor coming forward. Desiree had always known that it was Louis, but Mathilde gave a little start at the sound of the neat clipping French in the mouth of an educated Frenchman so rarely heard in Dantzig--so rarely heard in all broad France to-day. Yes--that is true, answered Sebastian, turning to him with a sudden change of manner. There was that in voice and attitude which his...