One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
warned? How, under the happiest of suppositions, propitiate
his family! And such a family, if consenting with knowledge,
would consent only for the love of money. It was angling
with as vile a bait as the rascal lord’s. Humiliation hung
on the scheme; it struck to scorching in the contemplation
of it. And it darkened her reading of Victor’s character.
She did not ask for the specification of a ‘good fortune
that might pass’; wishing to save him from his wonted twists
of elusiveness, and herself with him from the dread discussion
it involved upon one point.
‘The day was pleasant to all, except perhaps poor mademoiselle,’
she said.
‘Peridon should have come?’
‘Present or absent, his chances are not brilliant, I fear.’
‘And Pempton and Priscy!’
‘They are growing cooler!’
‘With their grotesque objections to one another’s habits at
table!’
‘Can we ever hope to get them over it?’
‘When Priscy drinks Port and Pempton munches beef,
Colney says.’
‘I should say, when they feel warmly enough to think little
of their differences.’
‘Fire smoothes the creases, yes; and fire is what they’re both
wanting in. Though Priscy has Concert-pathos in her voice:—
couldn’t act a bit! And Pempton’s ‘cello tones now and then
have gone through me—simply from his fiddle-bow, I believe.
Don’t talk to me of feeling in a couple, within reach of
one another and sniffing objections.—Good, then, for a successful
day to-day so far?’
He neared her, wooing her; and she assented, with a franker
smile than she had worn through the day.
The common burden on their hearts—the simple discussion
to come of the task of communicating dire actualities to
their innocent Nesta—was laid aside.
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