cardiac region:
"I'm so glad you came. But you gave me SUCH a fright an hour ago."
Mr. Gashwiler was both pleased and astounded. "What have I done, my dear
Mrs. Hopkinson?" he began.
"Oh, don't talk," she said sadly. "What have you done, indeed! Why, you
sent me that beautiful bouquet. I could not mistake your taste in the
arrangement of the flowers;--but my husband was here. You know his
jealousy. I was obliged to conceal it from him. Never--promise me
now--NEVER do it again."
Mr. Gashwiler gallantly protested.
"No! I am serious! I was so agitated: he must have seen me blush."
Nothing but the gross flattery to this speech could have clouded its
manifest absurdity to the Gashwiler consciousness. But Mr. Gashwiler
had already succumbed to the girlish half-timidity with which it was
uttered. Nevertheless, he could not help saying:
"But why should he be so jealous now? Only day before yesterday I saw
Simpson of Duluth hand you a nosegay right before him!"
"Ah," returned the lady, "he was outwardly calm THEN, but you know
nothing of the scene that occurred between us after you left."
"But," gasped the practical Gashwiler, "Simpson had given your husband
that contract,--a cool fifty thousand in his pocket!"
Mrs. Hopkinson looked as dignifiedly at Gashwiler as was consistent with
five feet three (the extra three inches being a pyramidal structure of
straw-colored hair), a frond of faint curls, a pair of laughing blue
eyes, and a small belted waist. Then she said, with a casting down of
her lids:
"You forget that my husband loves me." And for once the minx appeared to
look penitent. It was becoming; but as it had been originally practiced
in a simple white dress, relieved only with pale-blue ribbons, it was
not entirely in keeping with be-flounced lavender and rose-colored
trimmings. Yet the woman who hesitates between her moral expression and
the harmony of her dress is lost. And Mrs. Hopkinson was victrix by her
very audacity.
Mr. Gashwiler was flattered. The most dissolute man likes the appearance
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