The Custom of the Country. Edith Wharton. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Edith Wharton
Издательство: Bookwire
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Жанр произведения: Языкознание
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4057664143273
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       Edith Wharton

      The Custom of the Country

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664143273

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       VIII

       IX

       X

       XI

       XII

       XIII

       XIV

       XV

       XVI

       XVII

       XVIII

       XIX

       XX

       XXI

       XXII

       XXIII

       XXIV

       XXV

       XXVI

       XXVII

       XXVIII

       XXIX

       XXX

       XXXI

       XXXII

       XXXIII

       XXXIV

       XXXV

       XXXVI

       XXXVII

       XXXVIII

       XXXIX

       XL

       XLI

       XLII

       XLIII

       XLIV

       XLV

       XLVI

       Table of Contents

      "Undine Spragg—how can you?" her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid "bell-boy" had just brought in.

      But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to read it.

      "I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother.

      "Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.

      Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her rusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followed the mother's glance with good-humoured approval.

      "I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of her hostess's enquiry.

      Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs in one of the private drawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spragg rooms were known as one of the Looey suites, and the drawing-room walls, above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung with salmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette and the Princess de Lamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and Mrs. Spragg herself