But when did a woman ever mean business, except in the one great
business?
XIV.
To have got that sillily superfluous note to Verrian without any one's
knowing besides, Miss Shirley must have stolen to his door herself and
slipped it under. In order to do this unsuspected and unseen, she must
have found out in some sort that would not give her away which his room
was, and then watched her chance. It all argued a pervasiveness in her,
after such a brief sojourn in the house, and a mastery of finesse that he
did not like, though, he reflected, he was not authorized to like or
dislike anything about her. He was thirty-seven years old, and he had
not lived through that time, with his mother at his elbow to suggest
inferences from facts, without being versed in wiles which, even when
they were honest, were always wiles, and in lures which, when they were
of the most gossamer tenuity, were yet of texture close enough to make
the man who blundered through them aware that they had been thrown across
his path. He understood, of course, that they were sometimes helplessly
thrown across it, and were mere expressions of abstract woman with
relation to abstract man, but that did not change their nature. He did
not abhor them, but he believed he knew them, and he believed now that he
detected one of them in Miss Shirley's note.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82