Excerpt from The Lady With the Rubies: A Novel Aunt Sophie had tied on her big apron and was busy stowing away the clothes-pegs in its ample pockets as she took her wash down from the lines. She chuckled while she stepped along under the tight-stretched ropes. Fresh-fallen snow - what was that compared to the whiteness of her bleaching table-cloths and sheets? From time immemorial it had only been necessary to air the linen treasures of the honorable house of Lambert and Son, when forthwith there came a season of the finest bleaching weather. Of course there did! And why not? They had as good a right to a prerogative of the sort as the emperor had to his famous emperor's weather, thought Aunt Sophie, with a mischievous twinkle of her eye, though, for there was somebody in the house who positively would not listen to such blasphemies. Again to-day the delicious summer breeze had dried the rows of wet sheets to perfection, and the July sun had seemed to concentrate all its power upon that immense square yard. From over the roofs flocks of swallows shot into that court-yard like glittering steel arrows, their nests hung to the stone window-sills of the upper story in the eastern wing; and there was nobody there to disturb the little blue-coats when they settled upon the sills and engaged in their ceaseless chattering. Yes, there was not a creature there to disturb them - by a look or startling movement of the hand - for never a window of this side-building turned upon its hinges save for some hours in the year, when the rooms were aired; immediately afterward the large-flowered curtains fell to again, and patiently suffered the sun to absorb from them the last bit of coloring adhering to their rotten silk threads. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.