Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/59

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A NEWPORT AQUARELLE.
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quite agreeable. You ought to have him presented, and ask him to dinner."

"I should be glad to know him, but I am off for Lenox to-morrow. Would n't you like to have Thomas come for you while I am away? You can have the carriage every afternoon, just as well as not. Mrs. Fallow-Deer, with her numerous engagements, must have constant use for hers."

Miss Amelia Carleton was the cousin of Gladys, and Count Clawski had not exaggerated her fortune to Larkington.

She was a rather hard-favored iron-bound virgin of some forty odd years, well preserved and not the reverse of handsome in face or figure. She had remained Miss Carleton from choice, preferring the freedom of single life and enjoying the power which her money gave her. She could have married "anybody she pleased," as the phrase goes, but she did not please, and said she did not care to support any man for the pleasure of writing Mrs. before her name.