We never saw much of him, you know,
after we came here. Suppose you leave him to ME. I'll see him."
Mr. Harcourt reflected. "Didn't he used to be rather attentive to
Phemie?"
Clementina shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "I dare say--but I don't
think that NOW"--
"Who said anything about NOW?" retorted her father, with a return of his
old abruptness. After a pause he said: "I'll go down and see him first,
and then send for you. You can keep him for the opening and dinner, if
you like."
Meantime Lawrence Grant, serenely unsuspicious of these domestic
confidences, had been shown into the parlor--a large room furnished in
the same style as the drawing-room of the hotel he had just quitted.
He had ample time to note that it was that wonderful Second Empire
furniture which he remembered that the early San Francisco pioneers in
the first flush of their wealth had imported directly from France, and
which for years after gave an unexpected foreign flavor to the western
domesticity and a tawdry gilt equality to saloons and drawing-rooms,
public and private. But he was observant of a corresponding change in
Harcourt, when a moment later he entered the room. That individuality
which had kept the former shopkeeper of Sidon distinct from, although
perhaps not superior to, his customers--was strongly marked. He was
perhaps now more nervously alert than then; he was certainly more
impatient than before,--but that was pardonable in a man of
large affairs and action.
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