"She's not eighteen and she's a beauty and
she's taken up by a perfectly decent old duchess. She'll have
EVERYTHING! The Dowager will marry her to someone important. You'll
help," she turned on him in a flame of temper. "You are capable
of marrying her yourself!" There was a a brief but entire silence.
It was broken by his saying,
"She is not capable of marrying ME."
There was brief but entire silence again, and it was he who again
broke it, his manner at once cool and reasonable.
"It is better not to exhibit this kind of feeling. Let us be quite
frank. There are few things you feel more strongly than that you do
not want your daughter in the house. When she was a child you told
me that you detested the prospect of having her on your hands.
She is being disposed of in the most easily explained and enviable
manner."
"It's true--it's true," Feather murmured. She began to see advantages
and the look of a little cat died out, or at least modified itself
into that of a little cat upon whom dawned prospects of cream. No
mood ever held her very long. "She won't come back to stay," she
said. "The Duchess won't let her. I can use her rooms and I shall
be very glad to have them. There's at least some advantage in
figuring as a sort of Dame Aux Camelias."
CHAPTER XXVII
The night before Robin went away as she sat alone in the dimness
of one light, thinking as girls nearly always sit and think on
the eve of a change, because to youth any change seems to mean
the final closing as well as the opening of ways, the door of
her room was opened and an exquisite and nymphlike figure in pale
green stood exactly where the rays of the reading lamp seemed
to concentrate themselves in an effort to reveal most purely its
delicately startling effect.
Pages:
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371