United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the stead of this multitude of the unarrived, she had now the few, the select, "the best." Of all that band of indigent retainers who had once fed at her board like the suitors in the halls of Penelope, only Alcee Buisson still retained his right of entree.
Highcamp was a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. Alcee Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs.
Merriman, a pretty, vivacious little woman in the thirties; her husband, a jovial fellow, something of a shallow-pate, who laughed a good deal at other people's witticisms, and had thereby made himself extremely popular. Mrs. Highcamp had accompanied them. Of course, there was Alcee Arobin; and Mademoiselle Reisz had consented to come.
"Well, the reason you know how evil-minded the world is some one was talking of Alcee Arobin visiting you. Of course, it wouldn't matter if Mr. Arobin had not such a dreadful reputation. Monsieur Ratignolle was telling me that his attentions alone are considered enough to ruin a woman s name." "Does he boast of his successes?" asked Edna, indifferently, squinting at her picture. "No, I think not.
Her laughter was pitiful to hear; it echoed through the silent room as in a vault, while she made some tremulously light remark about her husband's drollery, grim as a jest from the dying. No one responded and she sat nodding her head like a mechanical toy and smiling her white, set smile through her teeth, until Alcee Buisson and Frau Lichtenfeld came to her support.
And he related the story of Alcee Arobin and the consul's wife; and another about the tenor of the French Opera, who received letters which should never have been written; and still other stories, grave and gay, till Mrs. Pontellier and her possible propensity for taking young men seriously was apparently forgotten.
Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted like a narcotic upon her. She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams. Alcee Arobin wrote Edna an elaborate note of apology, palpitant with sincerity.
"It isn't pleasant to have a woman tell you " he went on, unheedingly, but breaking off suddenly: "Now if I were like Arobin-you remember Alcee Arobin and that story of the consul's wife at Biloxi?"
And she recommended great care in dripping the coffee and having the omelet done to a proper turn. When she reentered, Robert was turning over magazines, sketches, and things that lay upon the table in great disorder. He picked up a photograph, and exclaimed: "Alcee Arobin! What on earth is his picture doing here?"
Then there is Jules Martel, the painter; Signor Donati, the tenor; Professor Schotte, who has dug up Assyria, you know; Restzhoff, the Russian chemist; Alcee Buisson, the philologist; Frank Wellington, the novelist; and Will Maidenwood, the editor of Woman. Then there is my second cousin, Jemima Broadwood, who made such a hit in Pinero's comedy last winter, and Frau Lichtenfeld.
Word Of The Day