English for Everybody - Advanced reading comprehension

Dracula

Page 56

Lucy, Asleep?

 

Lucy is asleep and breathing softly. She has more colour in her cheeks than usual, and looks, oh, so sweet. If Mr. Holmwood fell in love with her seeing her only in the drawing-room, I wonder what he would say if he saw her now. Some of the "New Women" writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There’s some consolation in that. I am so happy to-night, because dear Lucy seems better. I really believe she has turned the corner, and that we are over her troubles with dreaming. I should be quite happy if I only knew if Jonathan... God bless and keep him.

11 August, 3 a. m. Diary again. No sleep now, so I may as well write. I am too agitated to sleep. We have had such an adventure, such an agonising experience. I fell asleep as soon as I had closed my diary... Suddenly I became wide awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me. The room was dark, so I could not see Lucy’s bed; I stole across and felt for her. The bed was empty.

Vocabulary:

Drawing-room: Room in a Victorian house
Proposing: Here it means asking to marry someone
Condescend: Deal with someone you think is inferior
Consolation: Something that makes yoyu feel better
Turned the corner: Begun to improve
Agitated: Upset and nervous
Stole: Here it means moved like a thief

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