William John Locke
Where Love Is
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664590183
Table of Contents
Chapter III—A MODERN BETROTHAL
Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE
Chapter VIII—HER SERENE HIGHNESS
Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
Chapter XII—NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT
Chapter XIII—THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE
Chapter XIV—THE BUBBLE REPUTATION
Chapter XV—MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS
Chapter XVII—THE INCURABLE MALADY
Chapter XVIII—A RUDDERLESS SHIP
Chapter XX—ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE
Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR
Chapter XXIV—MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS
Chapter XXV—THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
Chapter XXVII—A DINNER OF HERBS
Chapter XXVIII—THE WORD OF ALINE
|WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter.
Chapter I—THE FIRST GLIMPSE
HAVE you dined at Ranelagh lately?” asked Norma Hardacre.
“I have never been there in my life,” replied Jimmie Padgate. “In fact,” he added simply, “I am not quite sure whether I know where it is.”
“Yours is the happier state. It is one of the dullest spots in a dull world.”
“Then why on earth do people go there?”
The enquiry was so genuine that Miss Hardacre relaxed her expression of handsome boredom and laughed.
“Because we are all like the muttons of Panurge,” she said. “Where one goes, all go. Why are we here to-night?”
“To enjoy ourselves. How could one do otherwise in Mrs. Deering's house?”
“You have known her a long time, I believe,” remarked Norma, taking the opportunity of directing the conversation to a non-contentious topic.
“Since she was in short frocks. She is a cousin of King's—that's the man who took you down to dinner—”
She nodded. “I have known Mr. King many weary ages.”
“And he has never told me about you!”
“Why should he?”
She looked him full in the face, with the stony calm of the fashionable young woman accustomed to take excellent care of herself. Her companion met her stare in whimsical confusion. Even so ingenuous a being as Jimmie Padgate could not tell a girl he had met for the first time that she was beautiful, adorable, and graced with divine qualities above all women, and that intimate acquaintance with her must be the startling glory of a lifetime.
“If I had known you for ages,” he replied prudently, “I should have mentioned your name to Morland King.”
“Are you such friends then?”
“Fast friends: we were at school together, and as I was a lonely little beggar I used to spend many of my holidays with his people. That is how I knew Mrs. Deering in short frocks.”
“It's odd, then, that I have n't met you about before,” said the girl, giving him a more scrutinising glance than she had hitherto troubled to bestow upon him. A second afterwards she felt that her remark might have been in the nature of an indiscretion, for her companion had not at all the air of a man moving in the smart world to which she belonged. His