Читать книгу The Girl From His Town - Van Vorst Marie - Страница 8

The Duchess of Breakwater was not sure how close Dan Blair’s thoughts were to marriage, but the boy from Montana was the easiest prey that had come across the beautiful and unscrupulous woman’s range. He had told her that he stayed on up in London to see a man from home, and when after four days he still lingered in town, she found his absence unbearable, and sent him a wire so worded that if he had a spark of interest in her he must immediately return to the Park. She had never been more lovely than when Dan found her waiting for him.

She had ordered tea in her sitting-room. She told him that he looked frightfully seedy, asked him what he had been doing and why he had stopped so long away, and Blair told her that old Ruggles, his father’s friend, had run over to see him with a lot of papers for Dan to read and sign and closed with a smile, telling her that he guessed she “didn’t know much about business.”

“I only know the horrid things of business – debts, and loans, and bills, and fussing.”

“Those things are not business,” Dan answered wisely; “they are just common or garden carelessness.”

She asked him why he had not brought Ruggles out to Osdene, and he told her he couldn’t have done a stroke of work with the old boy down here at the Park.

Stirring his tea, he appreciated the duchess. The agreeable picture she made impressed him mightily.

“Do you know,” he asked suddenly, “what you make me think of?”

And she responded softly: “No, dear.”

“A box of candy. This room with its stuffed walls, and you in it are good enough – ”

“To eat?” she laughed aloud. “Oh, you perfectly killing creature, what an idea!”

And as he met her eyes with his clear ones, with a simplicity she could never hope to reach, he put his tea-cup down; and as he did so the duchess observed his strong hands, their vigor, well-kept and muscular, but not the dandified hands of the man who goes often to the manicure.