"I hope you'll find them, I'm sure."
"Oh, thank you," said the Severe Arraigner, quite gratefully, it
seemed....
Through the open door of the pleasant little room, there floated in the
continual murmur of voices and the sighing refrain of the waltz. As from
a great distance, Carlisle noted that Mr. Canning found Mattie agreeably
amusing. (What on earth did I he men see in her, with her baby airs and
great pop-eyes?) But she was not thinking of her two special friends
now. The flat brusquerie of her two remarks to the man had struck her
own ear unpleasantly: they were neither polished nor courteous. Why was
she so silly as to let this nobody, who had nothing whatever to do with
her, so annoy and distract her at his pleasure? Above all, by what trick
of his look had he made her feel, the moment his eyes fell upon her,
that his apology had not settled the Beach episode, exactly,
after all?...
The whole situation seemed to be growing intolerable; and suddenly it
came over her that polished courtesy was not the note at all. Doubtless
the trouble was that she could not forgive his remark in the
summer-house, after all, no matter how generously she tried. What was
needed now was to put the man down in such a way that he would take care
not to come near her again....
Dr. Vivian, who seemed to hold fast to his one topic, was adding: "I
don't want to disappoint her, of course, particularly as \ she's sick
to-night. Just a little touch of fever, to be sure,--but she hasn't much
constitution, I fear...."
Miss Heth made no reply; the pause threatened to become a silence; and
then he said hastily, as if to save the conversation from total wreck:
"By the way, this child--Corinne Garland, her name is--is an operative
in your father's factory, Miss Heth. She's been there over two years."
Cally's head turned. For the first time she looked fully at the Cooneys'
poorhouse idol. And now she remembered that she had an annihilative
weapon against him.... Had he led up to this subject on purpose?
"Oh!... She works at my father's factory?"
The young man's look was plainly not controversial; no, it was as if he
were pleased that at last they had tapped a vein of common interest. In
one glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial
eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass
shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously made
for a much stouter person. She saw that the man looked absurdly out of
place here, at his own uncle's. Against this background of gaiety and
glitter, of music, powder and décolleté gowns, he really looked quite
like a stray from some other world: only the more so in that he himself
appeared quite unconscious of any alienship.
Well, then, let him keep to his own world. That, in fact, was precisely
what she desired of him....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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