The Bohemian set, such as are
possible, will be bound to come over to us. There will be left of it
but one unprincipled woman--and she wretched and an outcast. She has
made me absurd. I shall grind her under my heel. The east room shall
be prepared for his lordship; he shall breakfast there if he wishes. I
fancy he'll find us rather more like himself than he suspects. He
shall see that we have ideals that are not half bad."
He wrung my hand again. His eyes were misty with gratitude.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three days later came the satisfying answer to my cable message:
_"Damn! Sailing Wednesday_.--BRINSTEAD."
Glad I was he had used the cable. In a letter there would doubtless
have been still other words improper to a peer of England.
Belknap-Jackson thereafter bore himself with a dignity quite
tremendous even for him. Graciously aloof, he was as one carrying an
inner light. "We hold them in the hollow of our hand," said he, and
both his wife and himself took pains on our own thoroughfare to cut
the Honourable George dead, though I dare say the poor chap never at
all noticed it. They spoke of him as "a remittance man"--the black
sheep of a noble family. They mentioned sympathetically the trouble
his vicious ways had been to his brother, the Earl.
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