barricading himself as unsocially as before. Still, he expected to
remain for a week at least, which was very nice; and under these
circumstances it was as natural as possible that his connoisseurship
should be asked to pass judgment on the new little bachelor apartment in
Bellingham Court, where his friend Kerr was just comfortably
installed.... Where, also, no impossible stranger could intrude himself
upon the company of his betters, with revivalist vocabulary and
killjoy face.
The clock stood at eleven. The drawn shades imparted a restful dimness
to the bedroom, but the reliable maid Flora had been in to shut the
windows and start a merry fire in the grate. This room had been done
over last year in gray and old rose, with the "suit" in Circassian
walnut, and wainscoted walls which harmonized admirably. It was a
charming cloister, all most captivating to the eye, with the possible
exception of the dressing-table, which rather bristled with implements
and looked just a thought too businesslike.
Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose
habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries
of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing
her face....
While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with,
it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr.
Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had
addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears.
These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God
petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was
an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's
thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure
pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though
she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had
early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion.
Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type,
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