Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/76

 “Of course, if that girl were disposed of it would certainly facilitate” he mused sagely, then, inconsequential creature, gave me a light tap on the lower part of my waistcoat. “You old sinner,” he cried jovially, “much you care for proprieties. But you had better look out for yourself, you know, with a personage like Jacobus who has no sort of reputation to lose.”

He had recovered his gravity of a respectable citizen by that time and added regretfully:

“All the women of our family are perfectly scandalised.”

But by that time I had given up visiting the S family and the D family. The elder ladies pulled such faces when I showed myself, and the multitude of related young ladies received me with such a variety of looks: wondering, awed, mocking (except Miss Mary, who spoke to me and looked at me with hushed, pained compassion as though I had been ill), that I had no difficulty in giving them all up. I would have given up the society of the whole town, for the sake of sitting near that girl, snarling and superb and barely clad in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper, open low at the throat. She looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging down her tense face, as though she had just jumped out of bed in the panic of a fire.

She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing. Why did she stay listening to my absurd chatter? And not only that; but why did she powder her face in preparation for my arrival? It seemed to be her idea of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of great effort towards personal adornment.