The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and SonMeredith, George
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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son
Meredith, George
Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction
She told him what she liked in him. "You're the only man I was ever
alone with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I
hate men who can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute."
She left him and presently returned with, "Ah, Dick! old fellow! how
are you?"--arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her
hat jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality
to the costume. "What do you think of me? Wasn't it a shame to make
a woman of me when I was born to be a man?"
"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
"What! you think I don't do it well?"
"Charming! but I can't forget...."
"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.
Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
impertinent manner of using her eye-glass, and outrageous
affectation of the supreme dandy.
"They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's clothes, and
vice versaw, I suppose. You'll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to
make my bow to the beak, won't you? Say it's becas I'm an honest
woman and don't care to hide the--a--unmentionables when I wear
them--as the t'others do," sprinkled with the dandy's famous
invocations.
He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
"You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler take me? by
Jove!"
And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she
bent her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm, and reposed upon
it more. There was delicacy in her dandyism. She was a graceful
cavalier.
"Sir Julius," as they named the dandy's attire, was frequently
called for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount. When he beheld Sir
Julius he thought of the lady, and "vice versaw," as Sir Julius was
fond of exclaiming.
Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius. Or she would
sit, and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that
worthy fop.
She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her
the cleverest woman he had ever met.
All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold as ice, she
hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.
A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria's ears. She rushed to Adrian
first. The wise youth believed there was nothing in it. She sailed
down upon Richard. "Is this true? that you have been seen going
publicly about with an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray,
relieve me!"
Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt's description in
whose company he could have been seen.
"Tell me, I say! Don't quibble. Do you know _any_ woman of bad
character?"
The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the
world, Richard admitted to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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