"Do you women allow a stitch of
respectability to hang on each other's backs?"
"She'd want more than a stitch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's
not going to put on more clothes than that."
Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison
between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him.
He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when
he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light
of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more
attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright
lights--young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him--his senses were
swept by her fascination.
At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful--the thing of beauty and
the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But
when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the
expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man
beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him,
she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie
Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was
more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie.
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