Fenwick's Career by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 77 of 391 (19%)
page 77 of 391 (19%)
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Lady Findon. Cuningham, startled by the ignorance of his _protégé_,
drew out as quickly as he could _la carte du pays_. Lady Findon, the second wife, fat, despotic, and rich, rather noisy, and something of a character, a political hostess, a good friend, and a still better hater; two sons, silent, good-looking and clever, one in the brewery that provided his mother with her money, the other in the Hussars; two daughters not long 'introduced'--one pretty--the other bookish and rather plain; so ran the catalogue. 'I believe there is another daughter by the first wife--married--something queer about the husband. But I've never seen her. She doesn't often appear--Hullo--here we are.' They alighted at the Haymarket, and as they walked down the street Fenwick found himself in the midst of the evening whirl of the West End. The clubs were at their busiest; men passed them in dress-suits and overcoats like themselves, and the street was full of hansoms, whence the faces of well-dressed women, enveloped in soft silks and furs, looked out. Fenwick felt himself treading a new earth. At such an hour he was generally wending his way to a Bloomsbury eating-house, where he dined for eighteenpence; he was a part of the striving, moneyless student-world. But here, from this bustling Haymarket with its gay, hurrying figures, there breathed new forces, new passions which bewildered him. As he was looking at the faces in the carriages, the jewels and feathers and shining stuffs, he thought suddenly and sharply of Phoebe sitting |
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