United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Alfred shook his head negatively, without saying a word, and making a sign to his wife to take away the detested picture. "Has ever any one seen such impudence? This is not all; he has written at the bottom, in red letters, 'Cabrion, to his good friend Pipelet, for life," said the portress, examining the picture by the light.
It is unusual to present a finer person than that of the portress who pretended to show me the apartments in which the Floral Games are held; a big, brown, expansive woman, still in the prime of life, with a speaking eye, an extraordinary assurance, and a pair of magenta stockings, which were inserted into the neatest and most polished little black sabots, and which, as she clattered up the stairs before me, lavishly displaying them, made her look like the heroine of an opéra-bouffe.
And he said to her, in slaves' patois, "O portress, are the Cairenes black or white? I will slave for you no longer." Then said the slaves to him, "What is the matter with thee, O our cousin?" Cried Dalilah, "This is none of your uncle's children, but Ali Zaybak the Egyptian; and meseems he hath either drugged your cousin or killed him."
Dalrymple explained in strangely accented but good Italian that Sor Tommaso had met with an accident in the night; that he, Angus Dalrymple, was a friend of the doctor's and a doctor himself, and had undertaken all of Sor Tommaso's duties, and, finally, that he begged the portress to find Sister Maria Addolorata, to repeat his story, and to offer his humble services in the cause of the abbess's recovery.
The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a large clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax flowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the walls.
An old woman's voice answered, "Here." The portress was in bed; all in the house sleeping. We went in.
But hers also trembled in reply. "Not that I remember! No! Were you expecting him to be here?" "Well, it wasn't at all sure," he muttered. "Thank you. Good- night." "Good-night," she said, apparently with the simple perfunctoriness of the landlady who says good-night to dozens of strangers every evening. He hurried away upstairs, and met the portress coming down. "Well, well!" he thought.
"We are seeking William Graeme of Westburnflat," said Earnscliff. "He's no at hame," returned the old dame. "When did he leave home?" pursued Earnscliff. "I canna tell," said the portress. "When will he return?" said Hobbie Elliot. "I dinna ken naething about it," replied the inexorable guardian of the keep. "Is there anybody within the tower with you?" again demanded Earnscliff.
The lazy porter of the faubourg Saint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks; he of the Chaussee d'Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles in the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg Montmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full of crotchets.
The portress, finding that the intruder was known to the lady abbess, for she it was whom Baltasar had addressed as Carmen, now refastened the gate, and crept grumbling to her cell. Don Baltasar waited. Presently a door in the right wing of the convent was opened, a tall female form, clothed in flowing drapery, and carrying a taper in her hand, appeared at it and beckoned him to enter.
Word Of The Day