Martineau that Sir Richmond was to be let off
Belinda. It seemed abominably unjust. And it was also clear to him that
he must keep closely to his own room or he might find Miss Seyffert
drifting back alone to the hotel and eager to resume with him....
Well, a quiet time in his room would not be disagreeable. He could think
over his notes....
But in reality he thought over nothing but the little speeches he would
presently make to Sir Richmond about the unwarrantable, the absolutely
unwarrantable, alterations that were being made without his consent in
their common programme....
For a long time Sir Richmond had met no one so interesting and amusing
as this frank-minded young woman from America. "Young woman" was how he
thought of her; she didn't correspond to anything so prim and restrained
and extensively reserved and withheld as a "young lady "; and though
he judged her no older than five and twenty, the word "girl" with its
associations of virginal ignorances, invisible purdah, and trite ideas
newly discovered, seemed even less appropriate for her than the word
"boy." She had an air of having in some obscure way graduated in life,
as if so far she had lived each several year of her existence in a
distinctive and conclusive manner with the utmost mental profit and no
particular tarnish or injury.
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