United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His head was thrown far back, pressing down the stiff ruff, on which it seemed to rest as if it were a platter. The fair-haired man's well-cut features wore the rigid, lifeless expression of a mask. The mouth and nostrils were slightly contracted, as if they shrank from breathing the same air with other human beings.
"He still has that in his mind, has he?" he remarked. "Oh, he's mad!" she declared. "However, don't let us talk about him any more." The lights were being put out. Peter Ruff paid his bill and they rose together. "Come down to the fiat for an hour or so," she begged, taking his arm. "I have a dear little place with another girl Carrie Pearce. I'll sing to you, if you like.
"I can assure you," Peter Ruff answered, "that you are under a delusion as to the details of my profession. I am Peter Ruff," he admitted, "and I call myself a crime investigator in fact, I am the only one worth speaking of in the world. But I certainly deny that I am used to having dead bodies deposited upon my carpet, and that I make a habit of disposing of them especially gratis."
"He did not speak to you?" Peter Ruff asked. "I was afraid that he was going to," Miss Brown said, "but fortunately he met a friend who came to his table and lunched with him." "A friend," Ruff remarked. "Good! What was he like?" "Fair, slight, Teutonic," Miss Brown answered. "He wore thick spectacles, and his moustache was positively yellow." Ruff nodded. "Go on," he said.
When he returned, luncheon was ready, but Violet was absent. He rang the bell. "Where is your mistress, Jane?" he asked the parlourmaid. The girl had no idea. Mrs. Ruff had left for the village several hours ago. Since then she had not been seen. Peter Ruff ate his luncheon alone and understood. The afternoon wore on, and at night he travelled up to London.
The negro's head was held still farther back than the young noble's, whose stiff Spanish ruff prevented him from moving his handsome head as freely as other mortals. "That ape, Wibisma," said one of the school-boys, pointing to the approaching nobleman.
And yet, somehow, the wording of my invitation seemed to me a little ominous. Perhaps," he added, walking to the window and standing looking out for a moment, "I have a liver this morning. I am depressed. Violet, what does it mean when you are depressed?" "Shall you wear your gray clothes for traveling?" she asked, a little irrelevantly. "I have not made up my mind," Peter Ruff answered.
Historians dwell upon the mad excesses of ruff and farthingale, of pointed shoe and swelling skirt, as if these things stood for nothing in a society forever alternating between rigid formalism and the irrepressible spirit of democracy.
My lady had given me some suiting clothes for the occasion; and as for Marian, methought in her new gown of sea-green taffeta, with her new ruff and head-gear, that she looked as fair a matron as any mother of fine lads in all England. Seven months they had been wed, and it was May again. Methought such love had never been on earth since Eden. 'Twas gladness but to see them.
"Peter Ruff," he continued, "you have trifled with the one organisation in this world which has never allowed itself to have liberties taken with it or to be defied. Men who have done greater service than you have died for the disobedience of a day. You have been treated leniently, accordingly to the will of Madame.
Word Of The Day