Explore "Double Harness" by Antonio Hope on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was a dull chilly afternoon in March. Christine Fanshaw huddled her slight little figure -- she looked as if the cold would cut right through her -- over a blazing fire in her boudoir. She held a screen between the flames and her face, and turned her eyes on Anna Selford, who was paying her a call. Anna was a plump dark girl, by no means pretty, but with a shrewd look about her and an air of self-confidence rather too assured for her years; she was dressed in a would-be artistic fashion, not well suited to her natural style.
"Awfully sad, isn't it?" she was saying. "But mamma says Mrs. Raymore is splendid about it. Mr. Raymore was quite upset, and was no good at all at first. It was Mrs. Raymore who went and got Charley away from the woman, and hushed up all the row about the money -- oh, he had taken some from the office: he was in a solicitor's office, you know -- and arranged for him to be sent out to Buenos Ayres -- did the whole thing in fact. She's quite heart-broken about it, mamma says, but quite firm and brave too. How awful to have your son turn out like that! He was only nineteen, and Mrs. Raymore simply worshipped him."