Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early days that she would
want to win on every score and by every standard of reckoning. If
Marjorie had been a general she would have counted no victory complete
if the struggle was not sustained and desperate, and if it left the
enemy with a single gun or flag, or herself with so much as a man killed
or wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied very widely. She
wanted to impress the Carmel girls, and the Carmel girls, she knew, with
their racial trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by the
very highest quality all round. They had, she knew, two standards of
quality, cost and distinction. As far as possible, she would give them
distinction. But whenever she hesitated over something on the verge of
cheapness the thought of those impending judgments tipped the balance.
The Carmel girls were just two influential representatives of a host.
She wanted to impress quite a number of other school and college
friends. There were various shy, plastic-spirited, emotional creatures,
of course, for the most part with no confidence in their own appearance,
who would be impressed quite adequately enough by Trafford's good looks
and witty manner and easy temper. They might perhaps fall in love with
him and become slavish to her after the way of their kind, and anyhow
they would be provided for, but there were plenty of others of a harder
texture whose tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were girls
who were the daughters of prominent men, who must be made to understand
that Trafford was prominent, girls who were well connected, who must be
made to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's blood. As she
thought of Constance Graham, for example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, she
felt the strongest disposition to thicken the by no means well
authenticated strands that linked Trafford with the Traffords of
Trafford-over-Lea. She went about the house dreaming a little
apprehensively of these coming calls, and the pitiless light of
criticism they would bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness--that
was assured--but upon her success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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