For any one whose roots were in Waverton, "the best Boston society"
would in general be taken as the state of blossoming. It came to him as
a discovery, made there and then, that Olivia Guion had seized this
elect state with one of her earliest tendrils, and, climbing on by way
of New York and Washington, had chosen to do her actual flowering in a
cosmopolitan air.
He had none of the resentment the home-bred American business man
habitually feels for this kind of eccentricity. Now that he had caught
the idea, he could see at a glance, as his mind changed his metaphor,
how admirably she was suited to the tapestried European setting. He was
conscious even of something akin to pride in the triumphs she was
capable of achieving on that richly decorated world-stage, much as
though she were some compatriot prima-donna. He could see already how
well, as the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, she would fill
the part. It had been written for her. Its strong points and its
subtleties were alike of the sort wherein she would shine.
This perception of his own inward applause explained something in regard
to himself about which he had been wondering ever since the beginning
of dinner--the absence of any pang, of any shade of envy, to see another
man win where he had been so ignominiously defeated.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34