The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss Castries--d'Castries it
was originally, but the family dropped the d' for administrative reasons--and
he fell in love with her even more energetically than he worked. Understand
clearly that there was not a breath of a word to be said against Miss
Castries--not a shadow of a breath. She was good and very lovely--possessed
what innocent people at home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-
black hair growing low down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big
violet eyes under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a
Gazette Extraordinary when a big man dies. But--but--but--. Well, she was a
VERY sweet girl and very pious, but for many reasons she was "impossible."
Quite so. All good Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx at the
base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print. Further, marriage with
Miss Castries meant marriage with several other Castries--Honorary Lieutenant
Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries, her Mamma, and all the
ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs.
470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections again.
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