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Updated: June 21, 2025
She enjoyed thinking herself the wife of a jealous and inexorable lord, and arranged her flirtations to evade him with a degree of skill so great that it was lamentable it should be thrown away on an agricultural husband, who never dreamt that the "Fidelio-III-TstnegeR," which met his eyes in the innocent face of his "Times" referred to an appointment at a Regent Street modiste's, or that the advertisement "White wins Twelve," meant that if she wore white camellias in her hair at the opera she would give "Beauty" a meeting after it.
Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she possessed the charm they had lost, the freshness of her youth. Innocent gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek, and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland.
However good the taste may be, the effect will be spoiled if its appearance on the table does not come up to the expectation raised by the name on the menu. For this reason the subject of garnishes requires to be considered apart from the dishes they adorn. In the old time garnishes were few and simple, and when not simple, very ugly, as the camellias cut from turnips and stained with beet juice.
"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did not wish to be recognised; the concierge of course knew me, but she can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the marchands de meubles in the quartier, came upstairs, spitting and talking coarsely their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was a humorist, answered, "If there are any ladies' men present, we shall have some spirited bidding." The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many other things I should have liked to have bought but I did not dare the organ that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which we could never agree about ... but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. I don't know why, un caprice de femme. No one but you would have ever thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders; we dreamed the massy darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted something: 'les camélias du balcon ressemblent
The flowers were mostly roses, of the rarer kinds, with a very few fine Camellias; all of them cut with a freedom that evidently had known no constraint but that of taste, and put together with an exquisite skill that Fleda felt sure was never possessed by any gardener.
Followed by Charon, who had remained beside her all day, she walked slowly between the rows of plants, many of which were laden with flowers. Brilliant clusters of scarlet geranium, pale, fragrant heliotropes, and camellias of every hue surrounded her.
"'Camellias! I said, 'father, save me, save me, let me have some camellias! He was a tall, grey old man a terrible-looking old gentleman. 'Not a bit of it, he says. 'I won't. Down I went on my knees. 'Don't say so, don't think what you're doing! I cried; 'it's a matter of life and death! 'If that's the case, take them, says he. So up I get, and cut such a bouquet of red camellias!
He glanced dismally toward the garden border which lay basking in the sunshine under the wall that divided Villa Rosa from the rest of the world. It contained every known flower which blossoms in July in the kingdom of Italy, from camellias and hydrangeas to heliotrope and wall-flowers. Its spading was a complicated business and it lay too far off to permit of conversation.
There was something touching to him, too, in the fact of the child's leaving her childhood behind her, and confronting so ignorantly the unconscious dawn of a womanhood which might hold so much of the bitterness of knowledge. But, of course, Mollie did not understand this. "Why?" she asked him, forgetting her camellias, in her wonder at his fancy. "Why?" said he.
"How kind of you, Polly; I was just wishing you were here to arrange my flowers. These lovely daphnes will give odor to my camellias, and you were a dear to bring them. There 's my dress; how do you like it?" said Fanny, hardly daring to lift her eyes from under the yellow tower on her head.
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