Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
"After that," she continued, "he saw I was an honest woman and talked about marriage." Jaffery's fingers fiddled with bits of grass. "What licks me, my dear," said he, "is how you came to take up with the fellow." She shrugged her shoulders it was the full shrug of the un-English child of nature. "I don't know," she said, with her gaze still far away. "He was so funny."
Jaffery's face was transfigured into a vast, hairy smile. Barbara could dress crab like no one else in the world. She herself disliked the taste of crab. I, a carefully trained gastronomist, adored it, but a Puckish digestion forbade my consuming one single shred of the ambrosial preparation. Doria would pass it by through sheer unhappiness. And it was not fit food for Susan's tender years.
"For goodness' sake, my dear," said I to Barbara, "take charge of this thing." But she refused. She had too many already to look after. I must accept the responsibility as a moral discipline. So I tied a luggage label to the elusive object, inscribed thereon the legend, "Key of Jaffery's flat," and hung it on a nail which I drove into the wall of my library.
About this time, according to the sequence of events recorded in my all too scraggy diary, Doria came to us for a week-end, her first visit since Jaffery's outrageous conduct. She was glad to make friends with us once more, and to prove it showed the pleasanter side of her character. She professed not to have forgiven Jaffery; but she referred to the terrible episode in less vehement terms.
"You see, I must go home to my father's I'm strong enough now and start my life, such as it is, all over again. I can't touch another penny of the Wittekind money. Castleton's people and Jaffery must be paid." "Tom Castleton," I said, "was alone in the world, and Jaffery's not the man to take back a free gift beautifully given.
"But she's not a lady in your silly old sailor sense of the term. She's a hefty savage like me. When you had me aboard, did you think of having accommodation for a gentleman? Ho! ho! ho! At any rate," said he, at the end of the peal, "you've a sort of spare cabin? There's always one." "A kind of dog-hole for you, Mr. Chayne." Jaffery's keen eye caught the Captain's and read things.
As she stood, her little black and ivory head was not much above the level of mine. "What they may say is a matter of perfect indifference to me." I bent forward. "I think I ought to tell you what Jaffery's practically last words to me were: 'There's only one woman in the world for me. Meaning you." She broke away with a laugh. "And to prove it, he elopes with the fat woman!
It's a matter of life and death. I'm all right now. But you understand clearly what I mean?" "Certainly. I'm to swear that I saw the manuscript. I'm to lend myself to a pious fraud. That's all right for the present. But it can't last forever." Jaffery thrust both hands in his pockets and bent and fixed the steel of his eyes on me. I should not like to be Jaffery's enemy. "It can.
And she planted herself by the side of her abductor, glaring defiance at Jaffery. Jaffery smiled. "You told her that because she was a widow and an Albanian she would find considerable obstacles in her way and would forfeit half her money to the Government. You lying little skunk!" The vibration in Jaffery's voice arrested Liosha. She looked swiftly at Fendihook.
She gave us a full account of her interview and appealed to me for explanations of Jaffery's extraordinary conduct. I upbraided myself bitterly for having counselled her to bite Wittekind. I ought, instead, to have thrown every possible obstacle in the way of her meeting him. I ought to have foreseen this question of the manuscripts, the one weak spot in our web of deception.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking