Americans -- England -- Fiction; Children of the rich -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction
Bettina heard her. She sometimes wondered if she was ever pointed out,
if her name was ever mentioned without the addition of the explanatory
statement that she was the multi-millionaire's daughter. As a child she
had thought it ridiculous and tiresome, as she had grown older she had
felt that only a remarkable individuality could surmount a fact so ever
present.
It was like a tremendous quality which overshadowed everything else.
“It wounds my vanity, I have no doubt,” she had said to her father.
“Nobody ever sees me, they only see you and your millions and millions
of dollars.”
Salter watched her pass up the gangway. The phase through which he
was living was not of the order which leads a man to dwell upon the
beautiful and inspiriting as expressed by the female image. Success and
the hopefulness which engender warmth of soul and quickness of heart
are required for the development of such allurements. He thought of the
Vanderpoel millions as the lady on the deck had thought of them, and
in his mind somehow the girl herself appeared to express them. The rich
up-springing sweep of her abundant hair, her height, her colouring, the
remarkable shade and length of her lashes, the full curve of her mouth,
all, he told himself, looked expensive, as if even nature herself had
been given carte blanche, and the best possible articles procured for
the money.
“She moves,” he thought sardonically, “as if she were perfectly
aware that she could pay for anything. An unlimited income, no doubt,
establishes in the owner the equivalent to a sense of rank.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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