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Library / Literature & Fiction

The Marriages

by Henry James

Pages
about 47
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
52 min at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 29 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

“WON’T you stay a little longer?” the hostess asked while she held the girl’s hand and smiled. “It’s too early for every one to go—it’s too absurd.” Mrs. Churchley inclined her head to one side and looked gracious; she flourished about her face, in a vaguely protecting sheltering way, an enormous fan of red feathers. Everything in her composition, for Adela Chart, was enormous. She had big eyes, big teeth, big shoulders, big hands, big rings and bracelets, big jewels of every sort and many of them. The train of her crimson dress was longer than any other; her house was huge; her drawing-room, especially now that the company had left it, looked vast, and it offered to the girl’s eyes a collection of the largest sofas and chairs, pictures, mirrors, clocks, that she had ever beheld. Was Mrs. Churchley’s fortune also large, to account for so many immensities? Of this Adela could know nothing, but it struck her, while she smiled sweetly back at their entertainer, that she had better try to find out. Mrs. Churchley had at least a high-hung carriage drawn by the tallest horses, and in the Row she was to be seen perched on a mighty hunter. She was high and extensive herself, though not exactly fat; her bones were big, her limbs were long, and her loud hurrying voice resembled the bell of a steamboat. While she spoke to his daughter she had the air of hiding from Colonel Chart, a little shyly, behind the wide ostrich fan. But Colonel Chart was not a man to be either ignored or eluded.

“Of course every one’s going on to something else,” he said. “I believe there are a lot of things to-night.”

“And where are you going?” Mrs. Churchley asked, dropping her fan and turning her bright hard eyes on the Colonel.

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