Lydia, with slow
steps, was walking toward the garden....
As she approached the hotel she looked up furtively and Gannett drew back
into the room. He sat down beside a table; a Bradshaw lay at his elbow,
and mechanically, without knowing what he did, he began looking out the
trains to Paris....
A COWARD
"My daughter Irene," said Mrs. Carstyle (she made it rhyme with _tureen_),
"has had no social advantages; but if Mr. Carstyle had chosen--" she
paused significantly and looked at the shabby sofa on the opposite side of
the fire-place as though it had been Mr. Carstyle. Vibart was glad that it
was not.
Mrs. Carstyle was one of the women who make refinement vulgar. She
invariably spoke of her husband as _Mr. Carstyle_ and, though she had but
one daughter, was always careful to designate the young lady by name. At
luncheon she had talked a great deal of elevating influences and ideals,
and had fluctuated between apologies for the overdone mutton and affected
surprise that the bewildered maid-servant should have forgotten to serve
the coffee and liqueurs _as usual_.
Vibart was almost sorry that he had come. Miss Carstyle was still
beautiful--almost as beautiful as when, two days earlier, against the
leafy background of a June garden-party, he had seen her for the first
time--but her mother's expositions and elucidations cheapened her beauty
as sign-posts vulgarize a woodland solitude. Mrs. Carstyle's eye was
perpetually plying between her daughter and Vibart, like an empty cab in
quest of a fare.
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