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Updated: June 23, 2025
On her side she might very well have contended that it is hard to be pinned to a single chum, and that she was perfectly at liberty to make fresh friends if she wished without of necessity giving offence to the old ones by so doing. "Merle's so jealous!" she complained. "Why should she care? I'm sure I don't mind her walking about the school arm-in-arm with Beata Castleton!"
Now it was Merle's turn to walk up and down in suspense. It mattered little to her in itself whether he got the work or not, but she was keenly anxious that he should win. A couple of days later a telegram came: "Hurrah, wife!" And Merle danced round the room, waving the telegram above her head. The next day he was back home again and tramping up and down the room.
His attack had had another advantage of which he was unaware, for it had so occupied Merle's attention that he had neglected to have all the boats taken across the river, which enabled Murray's command to cross the next day, an error which, had Murray been possessed of any dash and energy, would have proved fatal to the French army.
In addition to this singularity of aspect there was the extraordinary seclusion and sordid miserliness of his mode of existence, more in harmony with the passiveness of extreme old age, than with the energy of a man still in the prime of his days. The village mothers frightened their children with tales about Jean Merle's gigantic strength, which made him an object of terror to them.
He was fast bound to it. When he looked up at the window, there seemed to be faces at each pane staring in. "What? Not finished yet?" they seemed to say. "Think what it means if you fail!" Merle's face, and the children's: "Must we be driven from Loreng, out into the cold?" The faces of old Uthoug and his wife: "Was it for this you came into an honourable family? To bring it to ruin?"
What was it that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's challenge on behalf of poor Pansy.
"D'you see Merle's picture in that New York paper yesterday? all hair and eyeglasses, and leaning one temple on the two first fingers of the right hand and guess what it said 'Young millionaire socialist who denounces country's entrance into war! Watch him he's trying to look like the picture now! Uncle Sharon read the 'millionaire socialist, and barked like a mad dog.
Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle's, intimating that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been present not only as a witness but as a critic.
Merle's reserve vanished on the perusal of Sophy's letter to him.
"We do know something about your old room, all the same," said Lindsay crossly, as a parting shot. "Oh, Lindsay, you don't really!" There was an anxious note in Merle's voice. "More than you think." "Then, whatever it is, you had better keep it to yourselves, and not let it go any farther." Merle's extraordinary behaviour seemed to make the mystery even deeper than before.
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