United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The latter half of the novel is a tissue of intrigue upon intrigue, with a complication of lawsuits and letters in which Malvolio's villainy is fully exposed, and he is forced to separate from Flavilla, but is unable to exert his claims upon Dalinda. She in turn cannot wring from him any compensation, nor can she in conscience recompense the faithful love of Leander while her husband is living.
"It's right scarce," he admitted, resolutely ignoring her tone. "Perhaps Flavilla will be better later in the day; I'll wait." He spoke without conviction, denying the impulse to have her cared for at once, in an effort to content and still Bella. However, he failed in both of these aims.
Dalinda's unhappy passion for Malvolio incites him to ruin her, and though he deludes her with an unregistered marriage at the Fleet, he has no scruples against marrying the rich Flavilla.
The triplets Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla all clothed precisely alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention, saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress, Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed. "Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?" repeated their father impatiently.
He got only a temporary relief, for when he went down Bella and June Bowman were whispering together; he passed the door with his silent tread and saw their heads close. Bella was actually pretty. An astonishing possibility occurred to him perhaps Bella would go away with Bowman. An unbidden deep relief at such a prospect invaded him; how happy he could be with Flavilla.
"No," said the girl; "we were skylarking a little, on our way to the gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door, and then Flavilla pushed me very gently and somehow I the door flew open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That is how it happened partly."
He rose and stood above the child's thin exposed body suddenly frozen into a deathlike sleep chilled with a vision, a premonition, the insidious possibility of surrender. He saw, too, that it was a solitary struggle; even his devotion to Flavilla, shut in the single space of his own heart, helped to isolate him in what resembled a surrounding blackness rent with blinding flashes of lightning.
Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she gently beat time with her tail.
This was his intention, but he saw with sharp discomfort that bristling strands defied his every effort. The hot edge of anger cut at him, but, singing, he dissipated it: "Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows fall? Why should my heart be lonely, And long for heaven " He broke off at the thought of Flavilla, still in bed, her head, if anything, hotter than last night.
But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers. "Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror. "My hair?" "Certainly. I want to look at you."
Word Of The Day