But after all I know little about my family, outside
of the one ancestor that anchors us in the Revolutionary era. He or his son
or his son's son may have married a Russian or a Mongolian for all I know.
Perhaps some one of my old aunts may have worked out a family tree in
cross-stitch, but if so I never heard of it. Well, I'm off to clean up for
dinner."
Alexina for the first time in their acquaintance flung her arms round
Gora's neck and kissed her warmly. Truth to tell her conscience was
smarting, although she was able to assure herself that not for a moment had
she really believed her sister-in-law to be guilty; she had merely grasped
at a straw. Gora returned the embrace gratefully and without suspicion. As
ever, she was a little sorry for Alexina.
CHAPTER X
I
Alexina felt only an intolerable ennui. Gora had gone in the morning;
she sat alone in her room. Of course she must have that explanation with
Mortimer, but any time before the first of the month would do. She was far
less concerned with that now than with the problem: what to do with her
life. How was she to continue to live in the same house with him? Perhaps
in far smaller quarters than these? For she could not leave him. She had
no visible excuse, and no desire to admit to the world that she had made
woman's superlative mistake.
She scowled at the lovely room in which she had expected to find
compensation in dreams, the setting for an unreal and enchanted world.
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