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What cared she for such exhibitions of spite and jealousy? She was Queen; and if she wished to be generous to her favourite's family, none should say her nay. And thus, with a smile half-careless, half-defiant, she went to meet the doom which, though she little dreamt it, awaited her.
Fower year an' fire upstairs, an' fire downstairs, an' fire all night, an' soomthin' allus wanted. An' he such an objeck afore he died! It do seem like a holiday now to sit a bit." And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of content. A lock of grey hair had escaped from her bonnet, across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish air.
He did not even dare to stop speaking, and his efforts at an easy, good-humored, half-careless presentation of his case was bitterly painful to him as it was to his auditors.
"Do as I have directed and you shall learn for yourselves," said the one who had invented the tactics. "I tell you that what you see is all shell. Now then " Four conspirators advanced in a half-careless and sauntering manner to where Kalora and the consul's wife sat by the sheltering tree, intent upon their exchange of secrets. "Pardon me, Mrs.
"And now," said she, thoughtfully, "you say that the real Thomas Leicester was seen thereabouts as well as my Thomas Leicester. Then answer me one little question. What had the real Thomas Leicester on his feet that night?" "Nay, I know not," was the half-careless reply. "Bethink you. 'Tis a question that must have been often put in your hearing."
Her eyes fell first, perhaps because his had changed in his contemplation of her. He smiled as he saw this, and in a half-careless, half-wistful tone, said quietly: "Agnes, what would you think of a man who, after having committed little else but folly all his life, suddenly made up his mind to turn absolutely toward the right and to pursue it in face of every obstacle and every discouragement?"
The first and eldest of all, Fedya, one would take to be about fourteen. He was a well-made boy, with good-looking, delicate, rather small features, curly fair hair, bright eyes, and a perpetual half- merry, half-careless smile. He belonged, by all appearances, to a well- to-do family, and had ridden out to the prairie, not through necessity, but for amusement.
She swept her gown on one side, disclosing a vacant place on the settee where she had been sitting. For a second her eyes said more to him than her courteous but half-careless words of invitation. Mannering made no movement forward. "I am sorry," he said, "but it is impossible for me to stay!"
Going into this, she asked for some trifling articles, and while looking over them drew the woman who kept the shop into conversation. "What kind of people live in this little street?" she inquired, in a half-careless tone. The woman smiled as she answered, with a slight toss of the head, "Oh, all kinds." "Good, bad and indifferent?" "Yes, white sheep and black." "So I thought.
Toni handed him the paper he required. "Thanks awfully. You're a first-rate little secretary, Toni! I guess we shall miss you at the office!" He did not observe the rather wistful look which swept over her face at the half-careless praise.
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