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The company came together a little before the early hour at which it was customary to take tea in Rockland. The Widow knew everybody, of course: who was there in Rockland she did not know? But some of them had to be introduced: Mr. Richard Veneer to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Bernard to Miss Letty, Dudley Veneer to Miss Helen Darley, and so on.
He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he said, in another tone: "Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I think we might make something better of them." "That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, and I shall go."
"I am afraid it is Henry Malden," said I, meditatively; "he is all you describe, but he is also radically bad; besides, having been in the Mexican war, he will have the prestige of a hero to Letty. How can the poor girl be undeceived before it is quite too late?" "What do you want to undeceive her for, Sally? Do you suppose that will prevent her marrying Mr. Malden?"
You know that fence was all done up in the spring, but that cussed breachy cow o' Tolman's hooked it down; an' if I wait for him to do it well, you know what he is!" "Oh, you can put off your fencin'!" cried Letty. "Only one day! Oh, you can!"
A sudden instinct, which he himself could hardly have explained, made him delay handing it over to Letty. He thrust it into the top tray of his collar-and-shirt wardrobe. Two days later the butler, coming in a hurry before breakfast to put out his master's clothes, shook the photograph out of the folds of the shirt, where it had hidden itself, without noticing what he had done.
Nevertheless a man saw much to admire in the ungainly head and long-limbed frame, and did not think any the better of a woman's intelligence for failing to perceive it. After the concert, as George and Letty stood together in the crowded vestibule, he said to her, with a smile: "So I take that house?" "If you want to do anything disagreeable," she retorted, quickly, "don't ask me.
How could he ever make a common household with his mother? He meant to do his duty by her, but she annoyed and abashed him twenty times a day. He would be far happier married, far better able to do his work. He was not passionately in love not at all. But for it was no good fencing with himself any longer he desired Letty Sewell's companionship more than he had desired anything for a long time.
"Well," said he, "you bear it in mind, what Mary said. Sometimes you give up too much. You've gi'n up all your life, an' now you're goin' to give up to Ellery an' Mary. You think twice, Letty, that's all I say. Think twice." He shook hands with her gravely, according to their habit, and she heard his steps along the frozen lane.
It had an enormous animal mouth, the lips of which, moving furiously without emitting any sound, showed that the creature was endeavouring to speak but could not. The moment Letty screamed for help the phantasm vanished. But her worst experience was yet to come. The spare attic which she was told was so badly haunted that no one would sleep in it, was the room next to hers.
Letty looked in perplexity from Betty's face, full of sweetness and mirth, to Marcella's. "She hasn't talked about them," she said, hesitating. "Of course, I haven't understood a good many things that are done here " "Don't try," said Marcella, first laughing and then sighing. Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her hostess in silence.
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