How, even, buy an engagement ring--
that costly superfluity? How even contrive to pay for all the small gifts
and attentions which an engagement involved? Yet why ask himself such
questions? For he was conscious of a fundamental repugnance to any such
scheme of life and was acutely aware that--for awhile, at least, and
perhaps for always--he wanted to live in quite a different mode.
Amy's confident assumptions began to fill the house, to alter its
atmosphere. Medora Phillips, who had begun by raising her eyebrows in light
criticism, now lowered them in frowning protest. She had found Cope
"charming"; but this charm of his was to add to the attractiveness of her
house and to give her a high degree of personal gratification. It was not
to be frittered away; still less was it to be absorbed elsewhere. Hortense,
who had been secretly at work on a portrait-sketch of Cope in oil, and
rather despising herself for it, now began to make another bold picture in
her own mind. She saw herself handing out the sketch to Cope in person,
with an air of high bravado; she might say, if bad came to worse, that she
had found some professional interest in his color or in his "planes.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221