Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that simplicity5 which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness, had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the misfortune to fall short of those ideas. He was too epigrammatic for her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the presence of something dark and nauseous. Her mental attitude toward him was contemptuous and perfectly6 polite. With the reputation of possessing a dangerous fascination—one of those reputations which can only emanate7 from the man himself—M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor intimidated8 Miss Delafield. He therefore disliked her intensely. His vanity was colossal9, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.
M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
“Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists. However, I am indifferent. The virtue14 of the violet is its own reward, perhaps, for the rose always wins.”
He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing15 near the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the white fingers and gallantly16 raised them to his lips, but before they had reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.
M. de Chauxville laughed—the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it. He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class—creatures to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim17. It is a singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve in a woman’s negative—singular, that is, when one reflects that the majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman’s life.
“I am aware,” said M. de Chauxville, “that the rose has thorns. One reason why the violet is hors de concours.”
Etta smiled—almost relenting. She was never quite safe against her own vanity. Happy the woman who is, and rare.
“I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into competition,” said Etta.
“Knowing,” suggested De Chauxville, “that although the race is not always to the swift, it is usually so. Please do not stand. It suggests that you are waiting for me to go or for some one else to come.”
“Neither.”
“Then prove it by taking this chair. Thus. Near the fire, for it is quite an English spring. A footstool. Is it permitted to admire your slippers—what there is of them? Now you look comfortable.”
He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge. As a carpet knight18 he was faultless. And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these things—or would do none of them—Paul, who never made her feel like a doll.
“Will you not sit down?” she said, indicating a chair, which he did not take. He selected one nearer to her.
“I can think of nothing more desirable.”
“Than what?” she asked. Her vanity was like a hungry fish. It rose to everything.
“A chair in this room.”
“A modest desire,” she said. “Is that really all you want in this world?”
“No,” he answered, looking at her.
She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.
“I am glad you did not suggest it.”
“Why?” she asked sharply.
“Because I should have had to go into explanations. I did not say all.”
Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him. There was something in the nature of a duel20 between these two. Each thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.
“Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?” she asked.
The baron laughed. Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his, for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist. A finished diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe21 and an unreliable friend.
“Perhaps—now that I reflect upon it,” continued the clever woman, disliking the clever man’s silence, “the person who said all would be intolerable.”
“There are some things which go without it,” said De Chauxville.
“Ah?” looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly claim for their own. He really loved Etta. He was trying to gauge22 the meaning of a little change in her tone toward him—a change so subtle that few men could have detected it. But Claude de Chauxville —accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature, especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves women of the world—Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.
The ring of indifference23, or something dangerously near it, in Etta’s voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attachi knew it. It had been in her voice whenever she spoke24 to him then. It was there now.
“Some things,” he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for this man was innately25 artificial, “which a woman usually knows before they are told to her.”
“What sort of things, M. le Baron?”
He gave a little laugh. It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere that he felt awkward and abashed26. He was surprised at his own sincerity27.
“That I love you—hum. You have known it long?”
The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman. Etta was smiling.
“No—o,” she almost whispered.
“I think you must have known it,” he corrected suavely28. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained29 control over himself. He was able to think about the riches which were evidently hers. But through the thought he loved the woman.
The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her face and the fire. Regardless of the imminent30 danger in which she was placing her complexion31, she studied the glowing cinders32 for some moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.
“No, my friend,” she answered in French, at length.
The baron’s face was drawn33 and white. Beneath his trim black mustache there was a momentary34 gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.
He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the back of her chair, looking down. He could only see the beautifully dressed hair, the clean-cut profile. She continued to look into the fire, conscious of the hand close to her shoulder.
“No, my friend,” she repeated. “We know each other too well for that. It would never do.”
“But when I tell you that I love you,” he said quietly, with his voice well in control.
“And a man—you put the word there—Etta.”
The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection—presumably to the Christian35 name of which he had made use.
He waited; passivity was one of his strong points. It had frightened men before this.
Then, with a graceful36 movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair, looking up at him. She broke into a merry laugh.
“I believe you are actually in earnest!” she cried.
He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response to her change of humor.
“Very clever,” he said.
“What?” she asked, still smiling.
“The attitude, the voice, every thing. You have known all along that I am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months. You have seen me often enough when I was—well, not in earnest, to know the difference.”
Etta rose quickly. It was some lightning-like woman’s instinct that made her do so. Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.
“Do not let us be tragic,” she said coldly. “You have asked me to marry you; why, I don’t know. The reason will probably transpire37 later. I appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it. Et voil` tout38. All is said.”
He spread out apologetic hands.
“All is not said,” he corrected, with a dangerous suavity39. “I acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word. In this matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual.”
Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled. She leaned against the mantelpiece, with her chin resting on her curved fingers. The attitude was eminently40 calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure. She evidently had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny. She shrugged her shoulders and waited.
De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal11 his vanity. He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly. But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for Etta—by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously beautiful—by the thought that she might never be his.
“It is not only that I love you,” he said, “that I have a certain position to offer you. These I beg you to take at their poor value. But there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy41 of your attention—circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider your determination.”
“Nothing will do that,” she replied; “not any circumstance.”
Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.
“I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never could under any circumstances marry me,” pursued M. de Chauxville. “Not that it matters, since it is too late. I am not going to allow you to draw back now. You have gone too far. All this winter you have allowed me to pay you conspicuous42 and marked attentions. You have conveyed to me and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in order to obtain your hand.”
“I doubt,” said Etta, “whether the world at large is so deeply interested in the matter as you appear to imagine. I am sorry that I have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing43 my footsteps wherever and whenever I please. I am sorry I conveyed to you or to any one else the impression that you had only to speak in order to obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue about.”
The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.
“Mais—” he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive44 monosyllable.
“I think you had better go,” said Etta quietly. She went toward the fire-place and rang the bell.
M. de Chauxville took up his hat and gloves.
“Of course,” he said coldly, his voice shaking with suppressed rage, “there is some reason for this. There is, I presume, some one else—some one has been interfering45. No one interferes46 with me with impunity47. I shall make it my business to find out who is this—”
He did not finish: for the door was thrown open by the butler, who announced:
“Mr. Alexis.”
Paul came into the room with a bow toward De Chauxville, who was going out, and whom he knew slightly.
“I came back,” he said, “to ask what evening next week you are free. I have a box for the ‘Huguenots.’”
Paul did not stay. The thing was arranged in a few moments, and as he left the drawing-room he heard the wheels of De Chauxville’s carriage.
Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men, looking at the portihre which had hidden them from sight, as if following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh—a queer laugh that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine, with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by Claude de Chauxville.
“The weakest thing I ever did,” she said cheerfully, “was to join Lady Crewel’s working guild49. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously small.”
“If you never do anything weaker than that,” said Etta, looking into the fire, “you will not come to much harm.”
“Perhaps not; what have you been doing—something weaker?”
“Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville.”
Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended for the waist of the young.
“If one could manage it without lowering one’s dignity,” she said, “I think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de Chauxville.”
Etta had taken up the magazine again. She was pretending to read it.
“Yes; but he knows too much—about every-body,” she said.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
brook
|
|
| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
baron
|
|
| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
diplomat
|
|
| n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
inadequate
|
|
| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
simplicity
|
|
| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
emanate
|
|
| v.发自，来自，出自 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
intimidated
|
|
| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
colossal
|
|
| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
conceals
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
conceal
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
enquired
|
|
| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
gallantly
|
|
| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
maxim
|
|
| n.格言，箴言 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
knight
|
|
| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
duel
|
|
| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
foe
|
|
| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
gauge
|
|
| v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
indifference
|
|
| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
innately
|
|
| adv.天赋地；内在地，固有地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
abashed
|
|
| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
sincerity
|
|
| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
suavely
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
regained
|
|
| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
imminent
|
|
| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
complexion
|
|
| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
cinders
|
|
| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
graceful
|
|
| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
transpire
|
|
| v.(使)蒸发，(使)排出 ；泄露，公开 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
tout
|
|
| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
suavity
|
|
| n.温和；殷勤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
eminently
|
|
| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
worthy
|
|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
conspicuous
|
|
| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
retracing
|
|
| v.折回( retrace的现在分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
expressive
|
|
| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
interfering
|
|
| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
interferes
|
|
| vi. 妨碍，冲突，干涉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
impunity
|
|
| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
flannel
|
|
| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
guild
|
|
| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |