FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57  
58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   >>   >|  
you going?" He laughed. "Mrs. Berkeley called me up this morning and asked me if I would take somebody's place. She didn't say whose place it was, but she did divulge the fact that the dinner is given to Vetch. I told her I'd come--that I was so used to taking other people's places I could fill six at the same time. But a dinner to Vetch! I wonder why she is doing it?" "That's easy. Mr. Berkeley wants something from the Governor. I don't know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very badly." "And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs. Stribling?" "Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should that interest you?" "Oh, they say--at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it--that Mrs. Stribling's latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself." He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war had cured her." "The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard enough to get rid of that." "I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make you human--and you've never been really human all through, you know--was not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France--he had gone into the war before his country--and to the nervous malady, the disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more esteem, but to lose some that you've got. Your salvation lies in the opposite direction from where flags are waving. If you could only deliberately arrange to do something that would lower your reputation in the eyes of gouty old gentlemen or mothers with marriageable daughters! If you could manage to ge
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57  
58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Stribling

 

Berkeley

 

Corinna

 

dinner

 

opposite

 
Governor
 

malady

 
called
 

rejoined

 

temporary


vanity
 

priggishness

 
regard
 

remedy

 

imagine

 
coquetry
 

obstinate

 

Heaven

 

complaint

 

admitted


waving

 
deliberately
 

direction

 

salvation

 

arrange

 

marriageable

 

mothers

 
daughters
 

manage

 

gentlemen


reputation

 

esteem

 

pretence

 

alluding

 

lightly

 
flippantly
 

uniform

 
talking
 
France
 
brought

disabled

 

country

 

nervous

 

thinks

 
reasoning
 

obvious

 
divulge
 

laughed

 
morning
 

places