"I mean to make a new life, if you will help me. I want to get away from all the old useless days. I want to do things which are worth while."
"Shall you soon go into Parliament?"
"I suppose it will take a year or two, but we shall begin to pave the way directly we go back to England, and I hope that will be for Christmas."
She avoided looking at me. I could never catch her eye, but her adorable little profile was good enough to contemplate, the crisp curl by her ear delighted me, and another in the nape of her neck filled me with wild longings to kiss it, and the pearly skin beneath it!
I think I deserve great praise for the way I acted, for the whole thing was acting. I was cold, and as haughty and aloof as she was herself, but I used every art I knew of to draw her out and make her talk.
She is such a lady that she fell into the stride and spoke politely as if to some stranger who had taken her into dinner at a party.
At last we talked of the Duchesse, and we discussed her interesting character, such a marvel of the ancien régime!
"She is so very good and charitable," Alathea said, "and has always a twinkle in her eye which carries her through things."
"You laugh sometimes, too?" I asked with assumed surprise. "That is delightful! I adore the 'twinkle in the eye,' but I was afraid you would never unbend far enough so that we could laugh together!"
I think this offended her.