Miss Bellard's inspiration Author:William Dean Howells Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fROMBIE, when his wife had re- ' joined him, sat dripping, as it were, from the deluge of conjectures, facts, and reflections which she had hastened to pour... more » out on him after coming away from Lillias. " Anything more outspoken, more boldfaced, more unblushing! If those are the manners that she is teaching the youth out there under the guise of elocution!" "There does seem to be a sort of brazen ingenuousness in it," Crombie allowed. " But you can't say there's anything deceitful. And that's what you dreaded." " I don't know whether I dreaded it. But I did hope that if Lillias had anything to conceal she would manage it with a little finesse, a little delicacy. I hoped that if she was going to bring the burden of a love-affair into the house with her, she would have the grace to carry it off so that it shouldn't seem to be a burden. But the brutal frankness with which she dumps it all on me!" " I don't call it brutal," Crombie said, with an air of reasoning, "though it is certainly frank. I think it has its charm. It's de- liciously honest, and it ought to be a relief to you, after the duplicity you've been dreading—the finesse, as you call it." " I call it duplicity, pretending to come here for a week, so as to bridge over between visits, and meaning all the time to make us a base of operations, with him at the Saco Shore House, so that they can see each other constantly under my very wing. If that isn't finesse, I don't know what it is!" " Then, I don't see what you have to complain of, with frankness and finesse both on hand in one and the same Mephistophelian innocent." "Oh, Archie!" Mrs. Crombie whimpered. "It's the care! It's the terrible disappointment of a broken-up summer! It's having the disturbance of it going on under our roof day after day, whe...« less