She kept very still; she had no desire for
conversation. But Janet tapped on her door in a moment and entered looking
very important.
"I've something to tell you," she announced. "You'd never guess in a
thousand years. Don't get up. 111 sit on the bed-used to any old place.
Only too thankful it isn't a box, or to sit down at all. Try one of mine?
Don't you feel well?"
"I've a rotten headache."
"Oh...mind my smoking?"
"Not a bit. What did you have to tell me?"
"Well, 'way back in ancient times, B.W., nineteen hundred and six, a young
Englishman named Gathbroke came to California after his sister, who was
ill." She was blowing rings and did not see Gora's face. When she leveled
her eyes Gora was unbuttoning her gaiters. "It seems she died some time
during the fire and he had a perfectly horrid experience getting the body
out to the cemetery. But that has nothing to do with the story. He met
Olive and the rest of us--_and Alexina_--the night of the Hofer ball. I had
forgotten the whole thing until Olive reminded me that we had joked Alex
afterward about the way she had bowled him over. His eyes simply followed
her, but Mortimer gave him no chance.
"Then. I remembered something else. Isabel Gwynne once told me that her
husband was sure Gathbroke had proposed to Alex one day when he took him
down to Eincona. He was in a simply awful state of nerves afterward.
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