I could kiss
the ground she walks upon. I would give anything--my life any day--if only
she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a little--as if she
didn't utterly despise me"; and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical
laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began to laugh outright,
exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely
foreign to him--
"Damn it, old fellow, this is a queer world we live in!" and rang for more
brandy and soda, which he was beginning, I noticed, to take pretty freely
now, although he had been almost a blue-ribbon man--as much so as is
possible for a hospitable country gentleman--when I first arrived.
9
It became clear to me now that, incredible as it might seem, the thing that
ailed William Oke was jealousy. He was simply madly in love with his wife,
and madly jealous of her. Jealous--but of whom? He himself would probably
have been quite unable to say. In the first place--to clear off any
possible suspicion--certainly not of me. Besides the fact that Mrs. Oke
took only just a very little more interest in me than in the butler or the
upper-housemaid, I think that Oke himself was the sort of man whose
imagination would recoil from realising any definite object of jealousy,
even though jealously might be killing him inch by inch.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88