ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG19090"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19090753"ᐳ“I know—so you said. I could only find two.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090754"ᐳ“Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090755"ᐳHe answered unwillingly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090756"ᐳ“No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090757"ᐳShe shook her head with decision.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090758"ᐳ“You certainly have it. Please look again.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090759"ᐳHe broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no one.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090760"ᐳSome snaring, entangling instinct—an instinct of the hunter—made her persist. She must have it. It was a point of honour. “Poor Theresa is so unhappy, so pursued! You saw that odious paragraph last week? I can't run the risk!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090761"ᐳWith a groan of annoyance, he promised at last that he would look again. Then the sparkling eyes changed, the voice softened.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090762"ᐳShe praised—she rewarded him. By smooth transitions she slipped into ordinary talk; of his candidature for the County Council—the points of the great horse he rode—the gossip of the neighbourhood—the charms of Beatty.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090763"ᐳAnd on this last topic he, too, suddenly found his tongue. The cloud—of awkwardness, or of something else not to be analysed—broke away, and he began to talk, and presently to ask questions, with readiness, even with eagerness.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090764"ᐳWas it right to be so very strict with children?—babies under three? Wasn't it ridiculous to expect them not to be naughty or greedy? Why, every child wanted as much sweetstuff as it could tuck in! Quite right too—doctors said it was good for them. But Miss Farmer—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090765"ᐳ“Who is Miss Farmer?” inquired Mrs. Fairmile. She was riding close beside him—an embodied friendliness—a soft and womanly Chloe, very different from the old.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090766"ᐳ“She's the nurse; my mother found her. She's a lady—by way of—she doesn't do any rough work—and I dare say she's the newest thing out. But she's too tight a hand for my taste. I say!—what do you think of this! She wouldn't let Beattie come down to the drawing-room yesterday, because she cried for a sweet! Wasn't that devilish!” He brought his hand down fiercely on his thigh.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090767"ᐳ“A Gorgon!” said Mrs. Fairmile, raising her eyebrows. “Any other qualifications? French? German?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090768"ᐳ“Not a word. Not she! Her people live somewhere near here, I believe.” Roger looked vaguely round him. “Her father managed a brick-field on this estate—some parson or other recommended her to mother.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090769"ᐳ“And you don't like her?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090770"ᐳ“Well, no—I don't! She's not the kind of woman I want.” He blurted it out, adding hurriedly, “But my wife thinks a lot of her.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19090707"ᐳWhereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance pliance on the man's part—the handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden, the short colloquy between them—“Of course, I see—you haven't forgiven me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else—it's a duty.” Then abruptly—“You still have three of my letters.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090708"ᐳAmusing again—his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always was the most unmethodical and unbusinesslike of mortals—poor Roger! She heard her own voice in reply. “Oh yes, you have. I don't make mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090709"ᐳA stare—an astonished admission. Precisely!ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090710"ᐳ“Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She has always confided in me—she trusts me, and I can't have that letter wandering about the world.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090711"ᐳ“I certainly sent it back!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090712"ᐳ“No—you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how careless you are—how you leave things about. I was always on tenterhooks. Look again, please! You must have some idea where they might be.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090713"ᐳPerplexity—annoyance!ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090714"ᐳ“When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down here. We reserved a room—which was locked up.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090715"ᐳ“À la bonne heure! Of course—there they are.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090716"ᐳBut all the same—great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he would be able to find anything—most unlikely there was anything to find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the fine hazel eyes—like a horse putting back its ears.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090717"ᐳAll of no avail—against the laughing persistence which insisted on the letters. “But I must have them—I really must! It is a horrid tragedy, and I told you everything—things I had no business to tell you at all.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090718"ᐳOn which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked determination to go back to the drawing-room....ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090719"ᐳBut it was the second tête-à-tête that was really adroit! After tea—just a touch on the arm—while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. “One moment more!—in the conservatory. I have a few things to add.” And in that second little interview—about nothing, in truth—a mere piece of audacity—the lion's claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first and foremost; to realise that she was not afraid of him—not one bit!—and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little pedant—ill-bred besides—and he knew it.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19090101"ᐳ“This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died,” said the curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. “It is, of course, on that account sacred to every true American.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090102"ᐳHe bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G.W. and some scroll work. There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the generations of the future.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090103"ᐳThe General's patriotic mind was not alloyed by any harassing sense of humour; he therefore firmly reminded himself that no Englishman had a right to think of Washington as anything better than a traitor to his king and country; yet he admitted that it was perhaps natural that Americans should consider him a great man.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090104"ᐳThe French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house; blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the coverts of young green.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090105"ᐳRoger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the young Englishman!—a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now that she began to realise him. As compared with the average man in Washington or New York, here was an exception—an Apollo!—for she too thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement, he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy manner—which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred—showed him conscious of his advantages.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19090334"ᐳ“And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090335"ᐳ“Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!” said the General hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. “Of course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth it all means, and where your affairs are—I'm hanged if I have the glimmer of an idea!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090336"ᐳRoger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090337"ᐳ“I haven't much myself,” he said quietly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090338"ᐳ“Do you—or do you not—mean to propose to Miss Floyd?” cried the General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but deserted, and apostrophising with his umbrella—for the night was soft and rainy—the presidential statue above his head.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090339"ᐳ“Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?” said Roger slowly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090340"ᐳ“Given me?—given everybody reason?—of course you have!—a dozen times over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger —with any young man's affairs—but you must know that you have set Washington talking, and it's not fair to a girl—by George it isn't!—when she has given you encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I ought to have taken myself off long ago.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090341"ᐳ“I didn't say anything of the kind,” said Roger hotly; “you shouldn't put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090342"ᐳ“When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for no one but the lady.” The General's umbrella, as it descended from the face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each word with emphasis. “However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well, well!—I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the Venetia for Saturday. And you, I suppose”—the inquiry was somewhat peremptory—“will be going back to New York?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090343"ᐳ“I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet,” said Roger, with decision.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19090564"ᐳ“Whom did she marry?” asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090565"ᐳ“A fellow in the army—Major Fairmile—a smart, popular sort of chap. He was her father's aide-de-camp when they married—just after we did—and they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess—as she used to on us.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090566"ᐳ“You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile—Mrs. Fairmile—yes, I remember,” said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red. “Your uncle—in town—mentioned her. I didn't take any notice.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090567"ᐳ“Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090568"ᐳ“It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her—your uncle and the others—knew what I didn't know!” cried Daphne, passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her all these years—that was what had happened; and now she had discovered it. That he could have a secret from her, however, was the real discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090569"ᐳDuring these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and she had ended by laughing at herself.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090570"ᐳYet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090571"ᐳ“Well, some of them knew,” he said, answering her last reproach. “And they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have told you, Daphne—of course I ought—I'm sorry. But the fact was I never wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090572"ᐳ“Because I mean to go.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19090573"ᐳ“Then you'll have to go without me,” was the incautious reply.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ