The Mask of the Enchantress

Начало книги

I am trapped. I am caught in a web, and it is small comfort to me that that web is of my own weaving. When I think of the magnitude of what I have done I am overcome by a numb terror. I have behaved in a wicked manner, I know, perhaps a criminal manner; and every morning when I wake there is a heavy cloud over me, and I ask myself what fresh disasters there are in store for me this day.

How often have I wished that I had never heard of Susannah, Esmond and the rest—particularly Susannah. I wish that I had never had that glimpse of Mateland Castle, so noble, so gracious, with its massive gatehouse, its gray walls and battlements like something out of a medieval romance. Then I should never have been tempted.

In the beginning it had all seemed so easy and I had been desperate.

"Dat ole Debil be at youse elbow tempting you," my old friend Cougaba on Vulcan Island would have said.

It was true. The Devil had tempted me, and I had succumbed to temptation. That is why I am here in Mateland Castle, trapped and desperate, seeking a way out of a situation which every day is becoming more and more dangerous.

Читать дальше →