Lettice

Оглавление

Molesworth Mrs.. Lettice

Chapter One “It Has Come.”

Chapter Two. A New-Comer

Chapter Three. The Tug of War

Chapter Four. An Old Story and a New Secret

Chapter Five. A Change in the Barometer

Chapter Six. A Cavalier Reception

Chapter Seven. A Tramp in the Snow

Chapter Eight. A Friend in Need

Chapter Nine. A Cab and a Carriage

Chapter Ten. New-Found Relations

Chapter Eleven. Home-Sick

Chapter Twelve. Ending Well

Отрывок из книги

About ten days later, a sad little group was assembled in the pretty drawing-room of the Villa Martine. It was a lovely evening, but the sunshine outside was not reflected on the young faces of Lettice Morison and her brother and sister. Lotty and Auriol, the children of the family, were amusing themselves quietly enough on the balcony, though now and then a little laugh made itself heard from their direction, causing Lettice to look up with a slight frown of disapproval on her pale face.

“How can they?” she said in a low voice, and she was moving to check them, when Nina held her back.

.....

Lettice’s colour rose high – all over her face; she felt the mortification doubly, since it was in the presence of her younger sister and brother. But she did her best not to show what she felt, and to any one not knowing her well, her emotion might have passed for what was only natural and almost seemly under the circumstances. And even in the tone of her voice as she answered, it required a nice and skilled observer to detect the latent armour of resistance in which she was determined to clothe herself. Unfortunately for her, her three companions, the two younger ones thanks to their intimate knowledge of her peculiarities, the third by dint of unusual and cultivated power of discrimination, which she herself had raised to suspicion, were not deceived by her words, in themselves perfectly unexceptionable.

“At any hour you like,” she said. “Of course it is best that we should know all about our money, though I really do know already all that is practically necessary. But these kind of formalities must be gone through, I suppose. So I can be ready at any hour you like. Will ten o’clock do?”

.....