Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“An exceptionally brilliant match,” remarked Aunt Cal on the eve of the wedding, as she sat in her house on Montauk Point and clipped the notice for the cousins in Scotland, and then she added abstractedly, “All is forgiven.”

“Why, Cal!” cried Aunt Josephine. “What do you mean when you say all is forgiven? Fifi has never injured you in any way.”

“In the past nine years she has not seen fit to visit us here at Montauk Point, though we have invited her over and over again.”

“But I don’t blame her,” said Aunt Josephine, who was only thirty-one herself. “What would a young pretty girl do down here with all this sand?”

“We like the sand, Jo.”

“But we’re old maids, Cal, with no vices except cigarettes and double-dummy mah-jongg. Now Fifi, being young, naturally likes exciting, vicious things—late hours, dice playing, all the diversions we read about in these books.”

She waved her hand vaguely.

“I don’t blame her for not coming down here. If I were in her place——”

What unnatural ambitions lurked in Aunt Jo’s head were never disclosed, for the sentence remained unfinished. The front door of the house opened in an abrupt, startled way, and a young lady walked into the room in a dress marked “Paris, France.”