United States or Nauru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I only know one or two sections of the country and those only as a stranger. You should ask Miss Madden." "Me?" said Celia. "Oh, I haven't come up for my examinations yet. I'm like Balder I'm preparing." "What I should like Mr. Thorpe to tell us," suggested Lady Cressage, mildly, "is about the flowers in the tropics in Java, for example, or some of the West Indies.
This tacit embrace was typical in his mind of the way they hung together, these two young women. It had been forced upon his perceptions all the evening, that this fair-haired, beautiful, rather stately Lady Cressage, and the small, swarthy, round-shouldered daughter of the house, peering through her pince-nez from under unduly thick black brows, formed a party of their own.
He had evidently been deaf to something that deeply moved the rest. Even Balder made remarks which seemed to be regarded as apposite. "What IS it?" asked Lady Cressage, with obvious feeling. "I don't know when anything has touched me so much." "Old Danish songs that I picked up on the quai in Paris for a franc or two," replied Miss Madden.
'I do declare I can't fancy my food now-a-days, said Lady Dain, 'and it's all that portrait! She stared plaintively up at the immense oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-table in her spacious and opulent dining-room. Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark. For it was a Cressage; and not only was it a Cressage it was one of the finest Cressages in existence.
"What have I done with my freedom that has been worth while?" "Not much," murmured Celia, under her breath. She moved forward, and stood beside Edith, with an arm round her waist. They looked together at the lake. "It is Lord Plowden, is it not?" asked the American, as the silence grew constrained. Lady Cressage looked up alertly, and then hesitated over her reply. "No," she said at last.
Don't you see this case in point," she pursued, with a little laugh, "I could not drag it out of you that you disliked the Simplon idea, so long as there was a chance of our going. Immediately we find that we can't go, you admit that you hated it." "But you wanted to go," objected Lady Cressage, quietly. "That was the important thing.
More than once he had caught a glimmer of what he felt to be the operation of this sense, in the company of Lady Cressage. He could not say that it had been discernible in her glance, or her voice, or her manner, precisely, but he was sure that he had seen it, somehow.
Cressage haughtily consented to paint Sir Jee's portrait on his usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio, and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy before being shown anywhere else. Sir Jee went to Bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came back gloomy.
The excited sentences which Edith threw over her shoulder as she walked appeared, upon examination, to contain a suggestion. "My dear child," she asked abruptly, after a moment's silence, "do you want to marry?" Lady Cressage paused at the mantel, and exchanged a long steadfast glance with her friend. Then she came slowly forward. "Ah, that is what I don't know," she answered.
"How many daughters have you?" Thorpe ventured the enquiry with inward doubts as to its sagacity. "Three," answered the General, briefly. It was evident that he was also busy thinking. "I ask because I met one of them in the country over Sunday," Thorpe decided to explain. The old soldier's eyes asked many questions in the moment of silence. "Which one Edith? that is, Lady Cressage?" he enquired.
Word Of The Day