Edgar Fawcett

“ If you haven't any respect for the memory of an uncle who's behaved so generously to you, you might at least cultivate the appearance of some. Your being here like this is too awful. For a year, certainly, you shouldn't be seen out, and here you are, without a scrap of mourning, on the very day after you've heard of your uncle's death."
Griffith gave a forlorn start. "By Jove! I forgot all about it!" Then he pursued, plaintively, "But, you see, I've never even set eyes on him."
"Do hush!" grimly commanded Mrs. Rochester. "People are listening to every word you say. ”

“ Quackenboss crossed the room and shook him smilingly by the hand. Van Courtlandt Van Wagenen, who rarely spoke to anyone out of his own little côterie of airy plutocrats, actually laid a hand on his shoulder and called him "my dear boy," and spoke of their two mothers having been second cousins. ... And so it went on, to the infinite amusement of Griffith.
He left the club that night in a rather melancholy mood, however. "What a world! what a world!" he cogitated, while stepping into a cab at the club-door. "I'm learning a lesson in human nature that might turn an angel into a satyr! ... ”

“ Griffith went to a table and took up an opened letter which lay there. "You asked me, my dear Evan, if there was any news. I've had this from my cousin Jack, down in Rio. He's utterly cleaned out again, and wants more help."
Evan, standing erect and handsome, with his close-cropped blond locks and his limpid blue eyes, scanned the letter, which was by no means long.
"I wouldn't give him another cent. He's always begging you to help him. And how many times have you sent him money, down there in Rio Janeiro?" ”

“ Well, anyhow, there's one human being I believe in, and to-morrow I'll go and tell her that I'm able to ask her if she'll marry me, and that I'd never have asked her unless I could have done it with the certainty that nobody would call me a fortune-hunter. ... I wonder what she'll say. ... No, I don't wonder a bit. I'm sure she'll stop scolding me, once and for all, and—consent to be Mrs. Jack Griffith." ... ”

“ It was just like him to reveal a romantic emotion in this solidly prosaic style.
"I didn't want to ask you before," he went on, "because I felt that people would call me a fortune-hunting kind of fellow. I—I've been horribly fond of you for over two years, and I supposed you might have seen it. You're rich, you know, and I didn't want——"
She broke in with a light, curt laugh.
"So, now that you can make people think I take you for your money, you're perfectly willing to ask me. But how about my feelings as regards what people will say? ”

“ Here the young artist glanced toward the easel that upbore his latest landscape. He was very well aware that Evan considered it a daub; but that knowledge did not alter his own conviction that it was a masterpiece of "symphonic" and "symbolic" impressionism.
"We somehow never get on, nowadays. We need only talk with one another five minutes to find ourselves fighting like cat and dog."
Griffith said this in his easy, dreamy way, several hours later, amid the music and babble of a ball at Sherry's. He looked very handsome, though a trifle worried and fatigued. ”

“ I'll just——"
"Evan!"
Griffith had caught his friend's wrist. With the other disengaged hand he lifted a letter high, so that the two fresh-lit gas-burners could strike it. Then, flutteringly, he gave the letter to Mowbray. He himself flung his form into an arm-chair.
"Read, Ev, read."
"Read what?" came the half dazed reply.
"That—that! Uncle John's dead, out in Nevada, and he's left me two millions. Some lawyers there write to some lawyers here. There can't be any mistake. Read!"
"I wonder how people will act," said Griffith to himself, quite late on the following afternoon. ”

“ Do spare me!" entreated Griffith. He had his revenge an instant later. He paused in the dance with his most genial bow, and placed his partner just at the side of a certain ravaged widower, Mr. Vanderdecken, whose attentions he knew that Sara Rochester almost loathed. ...
"I saw you commit your act of dastardly desertion," said Evan Mowbray to him, as they left the ball together, a little while before the beginning of the german. "Instead of aggravating that woman as you're constantly doing, Jack, why on earth don't you ask her to marry you?" ”

“ I haven't two millions, or anything like that sum. It isn't pleasant for me to realize that if I married you everybody would accredit me with sordid motives."
Rarely made angry by any event, habituated to many "scoldings" (as he was wont to call them) from this woman, whom, in his odd, placid way, he inestimably treasured, Griffith now felt his choler rise and kindle. ”

“ Griffith bridled. "My dear Evan, please recollect that I reserve to myself the privilege of insulting my own relations." Then, with drowsy irony: "I shouldn't be surprised, though, if you were right. Only, the greater wrong, I'm nearly sure, was done to Jack's father. There was some business partnership between Uncle Ralph and Uncle John. Jack often referred to that; he knows twice as much about it as I do. ... ”