majesty. 166
How quaint a custom it is for people who know each
other well and see each other in plain clothes
every day to get themselves up with meticulous
skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for
each other's examination. 235
"So I have already done something more for Germany.
That's splendid. Now tell me what else I can do."
Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see
through her thin disguise. 270
Nobody recognized the lily-like beauty of Miss Webling
in the smutty-faced passer-boy crouching at
Sutton's elbow. 282
BOOK I
IN LONDON
[Illustration: He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought
herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled.]
THE CUP OF FURY
CHAPTER I
Then the big door swung back as if of itself. Marie Louise had felt
that she would scream if she were kept a moment outside. The luxury of
simply wishing the gate ajar gave her a fairy-book delight enhanced by
the pleasant deference of the footman, whose face seemed to be hung on
the door like a Japanese mask.
Marie Louise rejoiced in the dull splendor of the hall. The obsolete
gorgeousness of the London home had never been in good taste, but had
grown as lovable with years as do the gaudy frumperies of a rich old
relative. All the good, comfortable shelter of wealth won her blessing
now as never before. The stairway had something of the grand manner,
too, but it condescended graciously to escort her up to her own room;
and there, she knew, was a solitude where she could cry as hard as she
wanted to, and therefore usually did not want to. Besides, her mood
now was past crying for.
She was afraid of the world, afraid of the light. She felt the
cave-impulse to steal into a deep nook and cower there till her heart
should be replenished with courage automatically, as ponds are fed
from above.
Marie Louise wanted walls about her, and stillness, and people shut
out. She was in one of the moods when the soul longs to gather its
faculties together in a family, making one self of all its selves.
Marie Louise had known privation and homelessness and the perils they
bring a young woman, and now she had riches and a father and mother
who were great people in a great land, and who had adopt
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