Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 30, 2025
She asked Helen that evening, lightly, as Helen had asked an equivalent question about Franklin and Miss Buckston, whether Mr. Digby and Lady Pickering were in love; she felt sure that they were not in love, which made the question easier. 'Oh no; not at all, I fancy, said Helen. 'I only asked, said Althea, 'because it seemed the obvious explanation. 'You mean their way of flirting. 'Yes.
Althea could not have said why it was, but this progress to friendliness between her cousins and Miss Buckston made her feel, as she had felt in the Paris hotel drawing-room over a month ago, jaded and unsuccessful. So did the fact that the vicar's eldest son, a handsome young soldier with a low forehead and' a loud laugh, fell in love with Dorothy.
Do you know of a nice house, Helen, in pretty country, and not too near Miss Buckston? It was rather a shame of her, she felt, this proviso, but indeed she had never found Miss Buckston endearing, and since knowing Helen she had seen more clearly than before that she was in many ways oppressive. Helen was reflecting. 'I do know of a house, she said, 'in a very nice country, too.
Mildred and Dorothy, glittering in white, played lawn-tennis indefatigably with Herbert Vaughan and Captain Merton. Aunt Julia embroidered, and Miss Buckston read a review with a concentrated brow and an occasional ejaculation of disapproval. Helen was lying prone in a green linen chair; her garden hat was bent over her eyes and she seemed to doze.
In the course of the next few days Miss Buckston went back to her Surrey cottage, and two friends of Helen's arrived. Helen was fulfilling her promise of giving Althea all the people she wanted. Lady Pickering was widowed, young, coquettish, and pretty; Sir Charles Brewster a lively young bachelor with high eyebrows, upturned tips to his moustache, and an air of surprise and competence.
Althea did not quite know what to say to this. She had never in the past opposed Miss Buckston, and it would be difficult to tell her now that she took too much upon herself. At a hint of hesitancy, she knew, Miss Buckston would pass to and fro over her like a steam-roller, nearly as noisy, and to her own mind as composedly efficient. Hesitancy or contradiction she flattened and left behind her.
Althea said that she had met her here, but that they had mutual friends, thinking of Miss Buckston in what she felt to be an emergency. Aunt Julia, with her air of general scepticism as to what she could find so worth while in Europe, often made her embark on definitions and declarations. She could certainly tolerate no uncertainty on the subject of Helen's worth.
Althea's feeling was of mingled discomfort and satisfaction. Her sympathies were with Aunt Julia, yet she felt a little guilty towards Miss Buckston, for whom her affection was indeed wavering. Inner loyalty having failed she did not wish outer loyalty to be suspected, and in all the combats that took place she kept in the background and only hoped to see Aunt Julia worst Miss Buckston.
I don't ask you to come home to do it, though we need you and your kind badly there, but you ought to lend a hand here. 'I don't really think I could be of any use, said Althea. 'With all your knowledge of political economy? Why, Miss Buckston could set you to something at once. Knowledge is always of use, isn't it, Miss Buckston?
'The number of drifting American women one sees over here! Miss Buckston ejaculated; to which Franklin cheerfully replied: 'Oh, we'll work them all in; they are of use to us in their own way, though they often don't know it. They are learning a lot; they are getting equipped. The country will get the good of it some day. Look at Althea, for instance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking