The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig; a Novel by David Graham Phillips
page 45 of 308 (14%)
page 45 of 308 (14%)
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grandmother, with an instinct that those tastes of Margaret's
proved her indeed a lady--and made it impossible that she should marry, or even think of marrying, "foolishly"--had been most graciously generous in gratifying them. Now, these luxuries were to be withdrawn, these pampered tastes were to be starved. Margaret collapsed despairingly upon her table. "I wish to marry, Heaven knows! Only--only--" She raised herself; her lip quivered-- "Good God, Grandmother, I CAN'T give myself to a man who repels me! You make me hate men--marriage--everything of that kind. Sometimes I long to hide in a convent!" "You can indulge that longing after the end of this season," said her grandmother. "You'll certainly hardly dare show yourself in Washington, where you have become noted for your dress.... That's what exasperates me against you! No girl appreciates refinement and luxury more than you do. No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better advantage. And you have intelligence. You know you must have a competent husband. Yet you fritter away your opportunities. A very short time, and you'll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and deriding you, and pitying you." Deriding! Pitying! "I've no patience with the women of that clique you're so fond of," the old lady went on. "If the ideas they profess--the shallow frauds that they are!--were to prevail, what would become of women of our station? Women should hold themselves dear, should encourage men in that old-time reverence for the sex and its right to be sheltered and worshiped and showered with luxury. As for |
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