One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
‘I like to be sure of my cutlet.’
‘I like to be sure of a tastiness in my vegetables.’
‘And good sauces!’
‘And pretty pastry. I said, Cordon bleu. The miracle is, it ‘s
a woman that Victor Radnor has trained: French, but a
woman; devoted to him, as all who serve him are. Do I say
“but” a woman? There’s not a Frenchman alive to match her.
Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended; and may
he wait long!’
Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a
flutter of real envy be seen. ‘My wife would like to meet such
a Frenchwoman. It must be a privilege to dine with him—to
know him. I know what he has done for English Commerce,
and to build a colossal fortune: genius, as I said: and his
donations to Institutions. Odd, to read his name and Mrs.
Burman Radnor’s at separate places in the lists! Well, we’ll
hope. It’s a case for a compromise of sentiments and claims.’
‘A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that there’s
always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we get rid of
Lupus and Vulpus.’
Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and Vulpus;
he saw none, and named the square of his residence on the
great Russell property, and the number of the house, the
hour of dinner next day. He then hung silent, breaking the
pause with his hand out and a sharp ‘Well?’ that rattled a
whirligig sound in his head upward. His leave of people was
taken in this laughing falsetto, as of one affected by the curious
end things come to.
Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he was
a better than the common kind of lawyer; who doubtless
knew as much of the wrong side of the world as lawyers do,
and held his knowledge for the being a man of the world:—
as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the mind to mount
for a look out over their own and the world’s pedestrian tracks.
I could spot the lawyer in your composition, my friend, to
the exclusion of the man he mused. But you’re right in what
you mean to say of yourself: you’re a good fellow, for a lawyer,
and together we may manage somehow to score a point
of service to Victor Radnor.
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