eBooks Base 2000

"For whatever merit my
reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
Cousin Henrietta."
He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."
The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.


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