Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/47

Rh It was also reported that his grandmother, the dowager, had left him nearly three millions of florins invested in the funds. No more was necessary for Claudie to consider Kehlmark highly eligible as a husband. Perhaps, if he had not been rich and titled, she would have preferred him somewhat more stout-limbed and full-blooded. But she never tired of admiring his elegance, his aristocratic features, his ladylike hands, his fine ultramarine eyes, his silken moustache, and his carefully trimmed beard. Even what the Dykgrave sometimes showed of reserve or timidity in his character, of languor or melancholy, was by no means displeasing to the gross-minded woman. Not that she was subject to sentimentalism: nothing, on the contrary, was further from her extremely coarse character; but because Kehlmark's moments of reverie seemed to her to betray a weak nature, a passive disposition, she would rule all the more easily over his person and his property.

Yes, this noble personage should prove malleable and ductile to the last degree. How, otherwise, would he have submitted so long to the yoke of that makeshift of a "miss," whom the over-expeditious Claudie