as those you claim succession from directed
‘Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows that a man hasn’t sense enough to know whom to despise.’
‘It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you claim succession from directed.’
‘That’s some more of what he’s been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I was inclined to suspect him, because he didn’t care about sauces of any kind. I always did doubt a man’s being a gentleman if his palate had no acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart. The idea of my bringing out a bottle of my ’40 Martinez–only eleven of them left now–to a man who didn’t know it from eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line he gave to my quotation; it was very cut-and-dried, very; or I, who haven’t looked into a classical author for the last eighteen years, shouldn’t have remembered it. Well, Elfride, you had better go to your room; you’ll get over this bit of tomfoolery in time.’
‘No, no, no, papa,’ she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease.
‘Elfride,’ said her father with rough friendliness, ‘I have an excellent scheme on hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A scheme to benefit you and me. It has been thrust upon me for some little time–yes, thrust upon me–but I didn’t dream of its value till this afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be most unwise to refuse to entertain it.’
‘I don’t like that word,’ she returned wearily. ‘You have lost so much already by schemes. Is it those wretched mines again?’
‘No; not a mining scheme.’
‘Railways?’
‘Nor railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see advertised, by which any gentleman with no brains at all may make so much a week without risk, trouble, or soiling his fingers. However, I am intending to say nothing till it is settled, though I will just say this much, that you soon may have other fish to fry than to think of Stephen Smith. Remember, I wish, not to be angry, but friendly, to the young man; for your sake I’ll regard him as a friend in a certain sense. But this is enough; in a few days you will be quite my way of thinking. There, now, go to your bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper. I wish you not to be here when he comes back.’
Chapter 10
‘Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.’
Processing your request, Please wait....
