Courtship -- Fiction; Forgery -- Fiction; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
In addition, Cora had always found it very difficult to deceive
Vilas: he had an almost perfect understanding of a part of her
nature; she could never far mislead him about herself. With her,
he was intuitive and jumped to strange, inconsistent, true
conclusions, as women do. He had the art of reading her face, her
gestures; he had learned to listen to the tone of her voice more
than to what she said. In his cups, too, he had fitful but almost
demoniac inspirations for hidden truth.
And, remembering that Cora always "got even," it remains finally
to wonder if she might not have told him everything at the
instance of some shadowy impulse in that direction. There may have
been a luxury in whatever confession she made; perhaps it was not
entirely forced from her, and heaven knows how she may have
coloured it. There was an elusive, quiet satisfaction somewhere in
her subsequent expression; it lurked deep under the surface of the
excitement with which she talked to Enfield of her imminent
marital abduction of his small boss.
Her agitation, a relic of the unknown interview just past,
simmered down soon, leaving her in a becoming glow of colour, with
slender threads of moisture brilliantly outlining her eyelids. Mr.
Enfield, a young, well-favoured and recent importation from
another town, was deliciously impressed by the charm of the
waiting lady. They had not met; and Enfield wondered how Trumble
had compassed such an enormous success as this; and he wished that
he had seen her before matters had gone so far. He thought he
might have had a chance. She seemed pleasantly interested in him,
even as it was--and her eyes were wonderful, with their swift,
warm, direct little plunges into those of a chance comrade of the
moment. She went to the window, in her restlessness, looking down
upon the swarming street below, and the young man, standing beside
her, felt her shoulder most pleasantly though very lightly--in
contact with his own, as they leaned forward, the better to see
some curiosity of advertising that passed. She turned her face to
his just then, and told him that he must come to see her: the
wedding journey would be long, she said, but it would not be
forever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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