Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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In the morning Owen also announced that he had not slept at all.

‘Oh, I never slept so well since I was in Mexico,’ said Villiers, with a triumphant look of a bird that has just pecked a good morsel from the garbage-heap.

‘Look at the frail aesthetic youth!’ said Owen, in a hollow voice.

‘His frailty and his aestheticism are both bad signs, to me,’ said Kate ominously.

‘And the youth. Surely that’s another!’ said Owen, with a dead laugh.

But Villiers only gave a little snort of cold, pleased amusement.

Someone was calling Miss Leslie on the telephone, said the Mexican chambermaid. It was the only person Kate knew in the capital — or in the Distrito Federal — a Mrs Norris, widow of an English ambassador of thirty years ago. She had a big, ponderous old house out in the village of Tlacolula.

‘Yes! Yes! This is Mrs Norris. How are you? That’s right, that’s right. Now, Mrs Leslie, won’t you come out to tea this afternoon and see the garden? I wish you would. Two friends are coming in to see me, two Mexicans: Don Ramón Carrasco and General Viedma. They are both CHARMING men, and Don Ramón is a great scholar. I assure you, they are both entirely the exception among Mexicans. Oh, but ENTIRELY the exception! So now, my DEAR Mrs Leslie, won’t you come with your cousin? I wish you would.’