Gandinot was a man who seized every opportunity of
practising his English.
'You will not wait for the good papa who calls so regularly for you?'
'I think I won't today, M. Gandinot. I want to get out into the air. I
have rather a headache. Will you tell my father I have gone to the
Promenade?'
M. Gandinot sighed as the door closed behind her. Ruth's depression had
not escaped his notice. He was sorry for her. And not without cause,
for Fate had not dealt too kindly with Ruth.
It would have amazed Mr Eugene Warden, that genial old gentleman, if,
on one of those occasions of manly emotion when he was in the habit of
observing that he had been nobody's enemy but his own, somebody had
hinted that he had spoiled his daughter's life. Such a thought had
never entered his head. He was one of those delightful, irresponsible,
erratic persons whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who
are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a
Upas tree.
In the memory of his oldest acquaintance, Ruth's father had never done
anything but drift amiably through life. There had been a time when he
had done his drifting in London, feeding cheerfully from the hand of a
long-suffering brother-in-law. But though blood, as he was wont to
remark while negotiating his periodical loans, is thicker than water, a
brother-in-law's affection has its limits.
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