More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Mrs. St George’s vacant hours, which were many, were filled by such wistful reflexions.
The fact was, you could hardly tell a lady now from an actress, or—er—the other kind of woman; and society at Saratoga, now that all the best people were going to Newport, had grown as mixed and confusing as the fashions.
But she had reached an acute crisis in her life, and her need for sympathy and help overcame her shyness. She vaulted over the fence into the field and went up to Miss Closson.
said I’d kill her,” broke from Nan in a hoarse whisper.
“I suppose you like love-making better, eh?”
She puffed again, and knew she was going to like it. Instantly her mood passed from timidity to triumph,
Mrs. St George did not own many jewels, but it suddenly occurred to her that each one marked the date of a similar episode. Either a woman, or a business deal—something she had to be indulgent about. She liked trinkets as well as any woman, but at that moment she wished that all of hers were at the bottom of the sea. For each time she had yielded—as she knew she was going to yield now. And her husband would always think that it was because he had bribed her…
“If I’d been a man,” she sometimes thought, “Dante Gabriel might not have been the only cross in the family.”
saw you go upstairs just now—and I waited.” “You waited? For me?” “Yes,” he
But you were always a friend of mine…” “I’ve no wish to be otherwise.”
“I—I swear to you I’d shoot myself sooner than let anything harm a hair of her head.”
“Never forget your promise about Conchita. That’s all I ask.”
But since Honourslove had to be saved, he would rather try to save it by his own labour than with a rich woman’s money.
“Well, sir, I think she’ll amuse you.” “I hate women who try to amuse me.”
“Why do you want these people asked here?” “I—I like them,”
When I spoke I really hadn’t got beyond … well, just wanting to see her again … and now…”
“She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,”
But nobody who sees you will bother to notice what you’ve got on.”
think it just shows she loves him better than she does her pride.”
His universe was a brilliantly illuminated circle extending from himself at its centre to the exact limit of his occupations and interests.
What I’m looking for is a friend with a settled income that he doesn’t know how to spend.”
Now, why can’t our girls talk like that?” “You’ve never encouraged them to chatter,”
see why Conchita says it’s the most beautiful place in England.” He smiled. “I don’t know. I suppose if one were married to a woman one adored, one would soon get beyond her beauty. That’s the way I feel about Honourslove. It’s in my bones.”
“There’s such a feeling. When two people have reached it together it’s—well, they are ‘beyond’.” He broke off. “You see now why I wanted you to come to Honourslove,” he said in an odd new voice.
“It’s a beautiful view,” she stammered, suddenly self-conscious. “It depends who looks at it,” he said.
She dropped to her feet, and turned to gaze away over the shimmering distances. Guy Thwarte said nothing more, and for a long while they stood side by side without speaking, each seeing the other in every line of the landscape.
“Oh, yes. They’d be shocked, I suppose, because it’s all about love. But that’s why I like it, you know,”
shall never form an attachment until I meet a girl who doesn’t know what a Duke is!”
Later he felt that he would have been perfectly happy as a country squire, arbitrating in village disputes, adjusting differences between vicar and school-master, sorting fishing-tackle, mending broken furniture, doctoring the dogs, re-arranging his collection of stamps; instead of which fate had cast him for the centre front of the world’s most brilliant social stage.
Sit in the shelter of the fuchsia hedge on such a day? Not Nan!
The girl remained motionless, her profile turned seaward, and the Duke was near enough to study it in detail.
and in the eyes she presently turned to him he saw not himself but the sea.
he wondered whether a certain fearless gravity were not what he liked best in woman. Then suddenly she smiled, and he changed his mind.
“that the Duke’s one of the stupidest young men I ever met.” “Well,” rejoined her governess severely, “I hope he thinks nothing worse than that of you.”
“How frightfully funny you are, Idina! I do wish you wouldn’t make me laugh so terribly in this hot weather!”
has been a long struggle, but I’ve decided…” “Yes?” “To ask Miss Annabel St George—”
“You don’t want me to advise you, Duke. You want me to agree with you.”
Annabel Tintagel was a strange figure with whom she lived, and whose actions she watched with a cold curiosity, but with whom she had never arrived at terms of intimacy, and never would.
“the greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things…
The trouble is, I suppose, that we change every moment; and the things we did stay.”
but praise from the Dowager Duchess had about as much zest as a Sunday-school diploma.
but I tell you I don’t want a child if he’s to be brought up with such ideas, if he’s to be taught, as you have been, that it’s right and natural to live in a palace with fifty servants, and not care for the people who are slaving for him on his own land, to make his big income bigger! I’d rather be dead than see a child of mine taught to grow up as—as you have!”
But as it was, there was the new Duchess isolated in her new world, no longer able to reach back to her past, and not having yet learned how to communicate with her present.
“For a good deal—yes. But it’s rather lonely sometimes, when the only things that seem real are one’s dreams.”
“I think I’m tired of trying to be English,”
“No; but I think I did speak them lightly. I made a mistake.” “A mistake, my dear? What mistake?” Annabel drew a quick breath. “Marrying Ushant,” she said. The Dowager received this with a gasp. “My dear Annabel—”
“don’t judge me, will you, till you find out for yourself what it’s like.” “What what is like? What do you mean, Conchita?” “Happiness, darling,”
“It must be less wicked to love the wrong person than not to love anybody at all,”
“And can’t I be of any use, even to the strange woman?”
Nan flushed with pride; it still made her as happy to be praised by Miss Testvalley as when the little brown governess had sniffed appreciatively at the posy her pupil had brought her on her first evening at Saratoga.
