Читать книгу The Charm School онлайн
2 страница из 17
" 76
Contents
ssss1
ssss1
ssss1
ssss1
ssss1
ssss1
ssss1
Chapter I
ssss1
Layout 4
CHAPTER I
"THE trouble with you, Mr. Bevans," said Mrs. Rolles, gently, "is that you really are the least little bit vulgar."
"Good!" said he. "I knew there was something nice about me."
Mrs. Rolles smiled imperturbably. With her hands lying palms upward in her lap, she was leaning back with that calm which good breeding brings only to those who believe absolutely in its supremacy. She was a woman of fifty, not handsome, but with all the marks of race—small ears flat to the head; a long, slender throat; fine, soft hair, and delicate hands, a little too clawlike for beauty. Her drawing-room in which they were sitting was a hideous room. It had been furnished for her by her parents on the occasion of her marriage in the year 1891. It was so long for its width that it had the effect of being a brocaded tunnel; the walls were hung with pale pink, on which electric lights and French water-colors alternated; the chairs were, of course, copies of Louis XV, and the mantelpiece was as crowded as a lawn-party with Dresden figures. No books were visible, except a copy of the Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, bound in black-and-gold, and three immense volumes of steel-engravings from the National Gallery. The house had a library—up-stairs in what had before Mr. Rolles's death been her bedroom—but the drawing-room was no place for reading; it was the place for just such terrible interviews as the one now taking place there.