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Philip, without speaking, pushed her gently aside, and went slowly down the stairs. He entered the parlour, where two or three children were seated, playing at dominoes; he despatched one for their mother, the mistress of the shop, who came in, and dropped him a courtesy, with a very grave, sad face, as was proper.
She spoke with dignity and looked straight at Grandcourt, whose long, narrow, impenetrable eyes met hers, and mysteriously arrested them: mysteriously; for the subtly-varied drama between man and woman is often such as can hardly be rendered in words put together like dominoes, according to obvious fixed marks.
We therefore hit upon this plan: That on the first masquerade-night at Vauxhall she should persuade her father and brother to go with her to her cousin's; that I should be close by in a coach, and, after she had gone in, I was to drive up as the other customers do, and obtain two dominoes, and then wait while she escaped from the women's apartment, and came down-stairs to the street door, where I was to put her in the coach, and drive off to Vauxhall.
In spring this picture is transformed suddenly as by the shifting of a panoramic view; or, as upon the stage, the Harlequin and brilliant Columbine emerge from the sober disguisement of their dominoes. If in winter the scene might be termed rude or commonplace, it now no longer merits such titles.
"Nay," said Valentin, "we concede that Monsieur de Lepany is sublime; we recognise with admiration that he is eloquent; but we submit that he is wholly unintelligible." And having delivered this parting shot, the club-footed realist slipped his arm through the arm of the fat student, and went off to a distant table and a game at dominoes. Then followed an outburst of offended idealism.
The little parties of dominoes and piquet scattered through the salon; some formed groups to converse; the ladies resumed their embroidery; and all the occupations of indoor life were assumed with a readiness that betokened habit, and gave to the "pension" the comfortable air of a home. Thus passed the first evening.
Never fear that she will look twice at these soldiers, in their sky-blue coats and broad red pantaloons, and their hair cut so close that their eyes must have watered under the operation. Imagine dragoons drinking currant-water; and playing dominoes for shapeless sous, which they rattle incessantly in their preposterous trousers!
Brigit who had, thinking of their great age, rather expected to find them more or less mummy-like, sitting in comfortable chairs tended by a middle-aged relation, was somewhat amused to find them squabbling fiercely over a game of dominoes, each with a glass of cider at hand. "Mon père la voici," announced Joyselle, with a kind of simple pomposity eminently fitted to the occasion.
The next disturbance came when the maskers had all taken their stand at one end of the room at the request of the six dominoes, who managed to whisper to each sophomore that there was presently to be a surprise. An expectant hush fell over the company as the six dominoes filed out of a side room and stood, for a moment, in full view of the sophomores.
Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery with little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two soldiers drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the Custodian's wife sewing at a garment. Christian said suddenly: "I thought we were friends." "Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?" "You went away without a word; friends don't do that." Harz bit his lips.
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