A House-Party, Don Gesualdo, and A Rainy June. Ouida
you so much, I wouldn't for worlds have you mixed up in anything which would probably, or at least very possibly, make me so much dislike you in the years to come."
Usk gives a laugh of much enjoyment.
His wife is slightly annoyed. She does not like this sort of jesting.
"You said a moment ago that you must marry!" she observes, with some impatience.
"Oh, there is no positive 'must' about it," says Brandolin, dubiously. "The name doesn't matter greatly, after all; it is only that I don't like the place to go to the Southesk-Vanes: they are my cousins, heaven knows how many times removed; they have most horrible politics, and they are such dreadfully prosaic people that I am sure they will destroy my gardens, poison my Indian beasts, strangle my African birds, turn my old servants adrift, and make the country round hideous with high farming."
"Marry, then, and put an end to anything so dreadful," says Dorothy Usk.
Brandolin gets up and walks about the room. It is a dilemma which has often been present to his mind in various epochs of his existence.
"You see, my dear people," he says, with affectionate confidence, "the real truth of the matter is this. A good woman is an admirable creation of Providence, for certain uses in her generation; but she is tiresome. A naughty woman is delightful; but then she is, if you marry her, compromising. Which am I to take of the two? I should be bored to death by what Renan calls la femme pure
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