Explore "The Cords of Vanity" by James Branch Cabell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at Negley and a tiny château which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I visited them at both places.
It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the fact -- so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for two, Jack," -- Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant speeches. But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about anything.