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A Great Success by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 52 of 125 (41%)
The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she
had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed
spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.

"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.
"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came
along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax
returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays
everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run
by the women soon!"

* * * * *

The studio had grown very quiet. Through some glass doors open to the
garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose
papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped
over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her
subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch
moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often
rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not
a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur
was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed
wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among
the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits,
the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by
good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general
ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as
money except to spend it.

Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic
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