United States or São Tomé and Príncipe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The daughter of the egregious financier de Barral did not answer at once this question going to the heart of things. Then raising her head and gazing wistfully across the street noisy with the endless transit of innumerable bargains, she said with intense gravity: "He has been most generous." I was pleased to hear these words.
Anxious to make myself disagreeable by way of retaliation I observed in accents of interested civility that the dear girls must have been wondering at the sudden disappearance of their mother's young friend. Had they been putting any awkward questions about Miss Smith. Wasn't it as Miss Smith that Miss de Barral had been introduced to me? Mrs.
Flora de Barral was not exceptionally intelligent but she was thoroughly feminine. And she would be enduring which is the essence of woman's visible, tangible power. Of that I was certain. Had she not endured already?
It may not be his most artistic, but it is an engrossing story. He never drew a girl but once like Flora de Barral; and, till now, never a man like the Swede, Axel Heyst, who has been called, most appropriately, "a South Sea Hamlet." He has a Hamletic soul, this attractive young man, born with a metaphysical caul, which eventually strangles him.
What your wife cannot tolerate in this affair is Miss de Barral being what she is." He made a movement, but I kept my eyes away from him and went on steadily. "That is her being a woman. I have some idea of Mrs. Fyne's mental attitude towards society with its injustices, with its atrocious or ridiculous conventions.
I wonder who is the serious person of us two now." She smiled faintly and in a friendly tone, from which I concluded at once that she did not mean to show me the girl's letter, she said that undoubtedly the letter disclosed an understanding between Captain Anthony and Flora de Barral. "What understanding?" I pressed her. "An engagement is an understanding."
How far it was necessary for Mr Smith to seek rural retreat I don't know. Perhaps to some extent it was a judicious arrangement. De Barral had to vanish; the theory was that de Barral had vanished, and it had to be upheld. Poor Flora liked the country, even if the spot had nothing more to recommend it than its retired character.
That was my reason for saying that Flora de Barral did go to sea..." "Yes. It seems conclusive," I agreed. "They might have escaped him involuntarily," observed Marlow. "However, a plain fact settles it. They went off together to see the ship." "Do you conclude from this that nothing whatever was said?" I inquired.
What, that would be effective, could one say, without proofs, without . . . This Mr. de Barral must be, Mrs. Fyne pronounced, either a very stupid or a downright bad man, to neglect his child so. You will notice that perhaps because of Fyne's solemn view of our transient life and Mrs.
Mrs de Barral was living then in a big stone mansion with mullioned windows in a large damp park, called the Priory, adjoining the village where the refined poet had built himself a house. These were the days of de Barral's success. He had bought the place without ever seeing it and had packed off his wife and child at once there to take possession. He did not know what to do with them in London.
Word Of The Day