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- 268 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
large experience and keen judgment. Your conversation is charming."
As she had spoken for ten minutes without giving me an opportunity to say a word, I could not quite understand how she arrived at an estimate of my conversational powers. However, I felt flattered, but said nothing.
Pressing my arm with her hand, which gave me a warm feeling in the neighborhood of my heart, she went on :
" I come to you as a man of the world. (I made a gesture of dissent, but it was very feeble, for I was already caught in the web.) I rely upon you. I ask you to help me. Bertrand?poor, dear Bertie?has no head for business?he is too young, too confiding?too ?too?what you English people call simple?no, too good?too noble?he takes after my family?to know anything about such affairs?so I come to you."
Was it possible that because I was considered unredeemably bad I was selected for this woman's purpose? As I mused, half disposed to get angry, I raised my head and my eyes encountered the burning orbs of the Madame, gazing full into mine. They seemed to bore like gimlets into my very soul. A thrill ran through me like the shock from an electric battery, and in an instant I seemed bound hand and foot to the fortunes of this strange woman. I felt myself being dragged along as the Roman Emperors were wont to draw their captives through the streets of their capital. I fluttered for a few seconds like a bird in the fowler's net and then I gave up. The contest was too unequal. God help me! The eyes had conquered and I lay panting at the feet, as it were, of the conqueror. I have only a hazy recollection of what passed between us after
CHRISTMAS DINNER IN VICTORIA 269
that; but I call to mind that she asked me to insert as an advertisement a paragraph from a Grass Valley newspaper to the effect that the mine (the name of which I forget) was a failure and that shares could be bought for two cents. When she took her leave I promised to call upon her at the hotel. When the " child " extended a cold, clammy hand in farewell I felt like giving him a kick?he looked so grim and ugly and patronizing. I gazed into his eyes sternly and read there deceit, hypocrisy and moral degeneration. How I hated him !
The pair had been gone several minutes before I re-covered my mental balance and awoke to a realization of the fact that I was a young fool who had sold him-self (perhaps to the devil) for a few empty compliments and a peep into the deep well of an artful woman's blazing eyes. I was inwardly cursing my stupidity while pacing up and down the floor of the "den" when I heard a timid knock at the door. In response to my invitation to " come in" a young lady entered. She was pretty and about twenty years of age, fair, with dark blue eyes and light brown hair. A blush suffused her face as she asked for the editor. I returned the usual answer.
" Perhaps you will do for my purpose," she said timidly. " I have here a piece of poetry."
I gasped as I thought, " It's an ode on winter. Oh,
Lord !"
"A piece of poetry," she continued, " on Britain's Queen. If you will read it and find it worthy a place in your paper I shall be glad to write more. If it is worth paying for I shall be glad to get anything."
Her hand trembled as she produced the paper.
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