Oke; and he always piously refused to do the part of Nicholas,
when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I didn't know then that I
was like the original Alice Oke; I found it out only after our marriage.
You really think that I am?"
She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a white
Vandyck dress, with the green of the park-land rising up behind her, and
the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, her
exquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess I thought
the original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she might be, very
uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom I had
rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all her unlikely
wayward exquisiteness.
One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservative
manifestoes and rural decisions--he was justice of the peace in a most
literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending the weak and
admonishing the ill-conducted--one morning while I was making one of my
many pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of my
future sitter, Mrs.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47