Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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And then he added, in a tone that partly betrayed his emotion,

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are going to meet my wife. Everyone calls her ‘la bella Elena’—but she has something so much better than beauty! She has a disposition just like a child’s—capricious, yes, sometimes, like a child—and she needs lots of money. But what woman doesn’t! And I know Elena will be glad to see you—she has heard me speak so often of my friend Robledo!”

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THE Marquise de Torre Bianca, having come home in good humor, was disposed to find her husband’s friend very entertaining. For the moment she had forgotten her pressing need of money, quite as though she had found a means of satisfying her creditors.

At lunch Robledo had a great deal to do to satisfy her curiosity about him. She wanted to know all the thrilling episodes of his adventurous life! Nor could she possibly believe that he wasn’t rich. How unlikely that anyone from America—either North or South America, it didn’t matter which—should not be rich, shouldn’t have millions! It required an effort for the Marquise, as for most Europeans, to reason that even in the New World there must be people who are poor.