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

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She was a beautiful woman, in her own unconventional way, and with a certain richness. She was going to be forty next week. Used to all kinds of society, she watched people as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinterested amusement. She was never IN any society: too Irish, too wise.

‘But of course nobody lives without hope,’ Mrs Norris was saying banteringly to Don Ramón. ‘If it’s only the hope of a real, to buy a litre of pulque.’

‘Ah, Mrs Norris!’ he replied in his quiet, yet curiously deep voice, like a violoncello: ‘If pulque is the highest happiness!’

‘Then we are fortunate, because a tostón will buy paradise,’ she said.

‘It is a bon mot, Señora mía,’ said Don Ramón, laughing and drinking his tea.

‘Now won’t you try these little native cakes with sesame seeds on them!’ said Mrs Norris to the table at large.’ My cook makes them, and her national feeling is flattered when anybody likes them. Mrs Leslie, do take one.’

‘I will,’ said Kate. ‘Does one say Open Sesame!’

‘If one wishes,’ said Mrs Norris.