Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Then, this emotion having passed: "M. de Gery," said he, "I am glad of the opportunity which is about to permit me to repay to you a little of the kindness which your family has shown to mine. From to-day, if you consent, I take you into my house. You are educated, you seem intelligent, you can be of great service to me. I have a thousand plans, a thousand affairs in hand.
But tell me truly, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart which you invoke so often, do you think that I am a very tempting wife for an honest man? Consider: of all these young men who ask as a favor to be allowed to come here, what one has ever thought of asking for my hand? Never a single one. De Géry no more than the rest. I charm, but I terrify. That is easily understood.
In any case his golden star was no longer in the ascendant. Paul de Gery knew this through Joyeuse, who was now a stock-broker's accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse. What troubled him most, however, was the Nabob's singular agitation, his need of constant distraction which had succeeded his former splendid calm of strength and security, the loss, too, of his southern sobriety.
Young de Gery was feeling cheered by the spectacle of this happy couple, when quite close to him a voice murmured it was not, however, the same voice that he had heard just before: "You know what they say that the Jenkinses are not married." "How absurd!" "I assure you. It would seem that there is a veritable Mme. Jenkins somewhere, but not the lady we know. Besides, have you noticed "
From his corner, de Gery admired the low and smooth forehead beneath its fringe of downward combed hair, the well-opened eyes, deep blue in colour, an abysmal blue, the mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its pure curve into an expression that was weary and drooping. In sum, the rather haughty mien of an exceptional being. Somebody near him mentioned her name Felicia Ruys.
And while de Gery, raised suddenly above all the anxieties of a newcomer, of one who solicits a favour, of a neophyte, did not move for fear of awaking from a dream: "Now," said the Nabob to him in a gentle voice, "sit down there, next me, and let us talk a little about mamma."
"Do you never rest?" de Géry asked her while she counted in a whisper the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary the shades. "Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it.
"Monsieur de Gery," he said in a trembling voice, with eyes that glittered behind their spectacles, the one feature of his face that was visible in the darkness. "I have an explanation to ask from you. Will you come up to my rooms for a moment?"
The city was becoming gradually and surely undermined from without, while at the same time the insidious art of a Dominican friar, Father Gery by name, had been as surely sapping the fidelity of the garrison from within. An open revolt of the Catholic population being on the point of taking place, it became impossible any longer to hold the city.
He spent his nights at the club, his mornings in bed, and from the moment he awoke his room was full of people who talked to him as he dressed, and to whom he replied, sponge in hand. If, by a miracle, de Gery caught him alone for a second, he fled, stopping his words with a "Not now, not now, I beg of you." In the end the young man had recourse to drastic measures.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking