The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Volume 5Meredith, George
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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Volume 5
Meredith, George
Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; English fiction -- 19th century; 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 eyeglass, 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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