Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/119

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THE COXON FUND
107

it? I mean that he has never, but never, had a deviation?" Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded.

I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up. "Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?" I was reduced to enquiring instead.

"Oh, yes! she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting into the carriage." These words somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram's big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green landau. "She said she was not disappointed," Adelaide pursued.

I meditated a moment. "Did he wear his shawl?"

"His shawl?" She had not even noticed.

"I mean yours."

"He looked very nice, and you know he's really clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expression—she said his mind is like a crystal!"

I pricked up my ears. "A crystal?"

"Suspended in the moral world—swinging and shining and flashing there. She's monstrously clever, you know."

I reflected again. "Monstrously!"