United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She didn't even want to make one of those marriages that had nothing to do with love, but was only a sensible arrangement for the securing of gowns and velvet hangings and the luxury of enclosed automobiles. Suddenly she felt lonely, and hoped that her mother would come back soon. But when her mother, now Mrs. Moses Feldt, did return, Linda was conscious of a keen disappointment.
Moses Feldt, the cigar in his grasp, pressed a hand to the probable region of his heart. "You don't know how I think of you," he protested, tears in his eyes; "just the idea of you exposed to anything at all in hotels keeps me awake nights. Now it's a drunk, or a fresh feller on the elevator, or " "It's nice of you," Linda said, "but you needn't worry. No one would dare to bother us.
Moses Feldt had had little time for the support of the church; although Linda recalled that she had uniformly spoken well of its offices. To condemn Christianity, she had asserted, was to invite bad luck. She treated this in exactly the way she regarded walking under ladders or spilling salt or putting on a stocking wrong.
Linda replied honestly that she enjoyed being with them extremely. Her mother's dislike, the heavy luxury of the Feldt apartment, held little attraction for her. Then, too, losing the sense of the bareness of the house Hallet Lowrie had built for his French wife, she began to find it surprisingly appealing. Her mind returned to her promise to Pleydon.
At last, in a tone exactly suited to his gaze, he exclaimed: "So that naughty mama has gone out again and deserted Moses and her little Linda!" In what way her mother had deserted Mr. Feldt she failed to understand. Of course he wanted to marry them the comprehensive phrase was his own but that didn't include him in whatever they did. Principally it made a joke for their private entertainment.
She could never say what they might be, they came at the oddest times and by the most extraordinary means; but at their occurrence she would thrill for a moment as if in response to a sound of music. It was, for example, absurd that Mr. Moses Feldt, who was a Jew, should make her feel like that, but he did.
He mopped a shining brow with a large colorful silk handkerchief. "It throws me into a sweat," he admitted. "Really, Mr. Feldt, you mustn't bother," she told him in one of her few impulses of friendliness. "You see, we are very experienced." He nodded without visible happiness at this truth. "I'm a jackass!" he cried. "Judith tells me that all the time.
Now, as I am well persuaded that she was in all the Feldt Marshal's secrets, I would humbly submit it to Your Grace, whether it might NOT BE PROPER FOR HIS MAJESTY to order his Ministers at the Court of Petersburgh to make instance to the Empress of Russia, that this woman might be obliged to come to Petersburgh, where, IF PROPER MEASURES WERE TAKEN WITH HER, she may give much light into this, and perhaps into other affairs.
"Oh, my God!" she cried; "the old ladies' home!" With her mother away on a wedding-trip with Mr. Moses Feldt, Linda was suddenly projected into the companionship of his two daughters. One, as he had said, was light, but a different fairness from Mrs.
In support of herself Mrs. Feldt asserted again that she had "lived," with stacks of friends and flowers, lavish parties and devoted attendance. "You may be smarter than I was," she went on, "but what good it does you who can say? And if you expect to get something for nothing you're fooled before you start." She shook out the airy breadths of a vivid echo of past daring.
Word Of The Day