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Miss Annie Brett moved quickly towards the commercial traveller. Til tell you what I think of it, she said, with ecstatic resentment. 'I think it's just shameful! Why should the Countess of Chell want to rob a lot of respectable young ladies of their living? I can tell you they're just as respectable as the Countess of Chell is yes, and perhaps more, by all accounts.
Their acquaintance extended over three months; And she knew equally little of the manners and customs of the Five Towns. For although Sneyd lies but a few miles from the immense seat of pottery manufacture, it is not as the Five Towns are. It is not feverish, grimy, rude, strenuous, Bacchic, and wicked. It is a model village, presided over by the Countess of Chell.
Because, in that year of royal festival, Bursley, in common with many other boroughs, had had a fancy to choose a Mayor out of the House of Lords. The Earl of Chell, a magnate of the county, had consented to wear the mayoral chain and dispense the mayoral hospitalities on condition that he was provided with a deputy for daily use.
He thought and believed: "This is the finest woman I ever saw!" He clearly perceived the inferiority of other women, whom, nevertheless, he admired and liked, such as the Countess of Chell and Lady Woldo. It was not her brains, nor her beauty, nor her stylishness that affected him. No! It was something mysterious and dizzying that resided in every particle of her individuality.
Magnificent though Mrs Swann was, the ample Mrs Clayton Vernon, discreetly décolletée, was even more magnificent. Dressed as she meant to show herself at the concert, Mrs Clayton Vernon made a resplendent figure worthy to be the cousin of the leader of the orchestra and worthy even to take the place of the missing Countess of Chell.
The Superintendent had said: "I have very great pleasure in proposing the vote of thanks to the Countess of Chell." And so Denry heard himself saying: "I have very great pleasure in seconding the vote of thanks to the Countess of Chell." He could not think of anything else to say. And there was a pause, a real pause, not a pause merely in Denry's sick imagination. Then the cloud was dissipated.
She had a widowed mother in the picturesque village of Sneyd, where the mortal and immortal welfare of every inhabitant was watched over by God's vicegerent, the busy Countess of Chell; she possessed about two hundred pounds of her own; her mother for years had been begging Amy to share her home free of expense. But nevertheless Amy's mind was black with foreboding and vague dejection.
They could not be princesses, nor even titled aristocrats. He supposed them to belong to some baccarat-playing county family. The piece of luck consisted in the passage down the restaurant of the Countess of Chell, who had been lunching there with a party, and whom he had known locally in more gusty days. The Countess bowed stiffly to the red hat, and the red hat responded with eager fulsomeness.
Then the rumour began to form, and to thicken, and to spread, that Denry's famous Universal Thrift Club was unsound at the core, and that the teeth of those who had bitten the apple would be set on edge. And Denry saw that something great, something decisive, must be done and done with rapidity. His thoughts turned to the Countess of Chell.
And those few seconds were worth to him the whole of Denry's precious life yes, not excluding the seconds in which he had kissed Ruth and the minutes in which he had danced with the Countess of Chell. Then two men with beards took the rope from his hands. The air was now alive with shoutings.
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