| OCR Text |
Show handsome stipend indeed, including all the Hold's profits. The Gundarholt fortune was to be Armand's and after his death, his children's at their majority, and he was to do with that as he pleased. Following this long and painful interview-for Raphael Rice- Needlesmith had ever been a proud and independent man-the old couple came out of the study with Dr'Anya's father and talked quietly with the good Father Gregory who was to make holy the pledging, waiting for the tardy Armand. Old Doctor Smith-Sheblem, Igor's father, was by the fireplace, leaning against the mantle and looking morose because Igor had taken off in a fury at losing his childhood disciple as a partner and was trailing after an agricultural expedition along the edge of the desert in the Provinces in a high drama of grief. The leader of the expedition, indeed, kept telemming back to the old man that Igor would stay not at all inside the armored aircar, and they'd all epected him to be killed forthwith by a SaurianLynx or by a Four Kingdom's knight, or be carried off by a Seljuk Warrior. Dr'Anya herself was sitting by the window, attired in a pledging outfit of white lace with a veil of the palest lavender falling from a circlet of silver around her dark hair- And she was in an agony of suspense. The old couple had built GundarholtManor on the westernmost sector of the Hold they had bought from Doctor Needlesmith whilst the young Anya had been away at Terra University, so even their presence on that piece of land over which she had ever and often ridden on her charger, Jimbo, was a not altogether pleasant surprise. But, by the knees of Saint Isaac, the stories she'd heard from hither and yon about the son, Armand! 103 |
