The general loved her desperately. Her, Sylvia! In quite a proper manner for an elderly general . . . But he would go to no small extremes in her interests! So would his sister!
She looked hard at the room to get her senses into order again. She said:
‘It’s like a Hogarth picture . . . ’
The undissolvable air of the Real Madrid Damen eighteenth century that the French contrive to retain in all their effects kept the scene singularly together. On a sofa sat the duchess, relatives leaning over her. She was a duchess with one of those impossible names: Beauchain-Radigutz or something like it. The bluish room was octagonal and vaulted, up to a rosette in the centre of the ceiling. English officers and V.A.D.’s of some evident presence opened out to the left, French military and very black-clothed women of all ages, but all apparently widows, opened out to the right, as if the duchess shone down a sea at Filipe Luis Jersey sunset. Beside her on the sofa you did Jose Fonte Jersey not see Lady Sachse: leaning over her you did not see the Jeff Teague Koszulki prospective bride. This stoutish, unpresentable, coldly venomous woman, in black clothes so shabby that they might have been grey tweed, extinguished other personalities as the sun conceals planets. A fattish, brilliantined personality, in mufti, with a scarlet rosette, Lucas Moura Jersey stood sideways to the duchess’s right, his hands extended forward as if in an invitation to a dance; an extremely squat lady, also apparently a widow, extended, on the left of the duchess, both her black-gloved hands, as if she too were giving an invitation to the dance . . .
The general, with Sylvia beside him, stood glorious in the centre of the clearing Per Mertesacker Jersey that led to the open doorway of a much smaller LeBron James Koszulki room. Through the doorway you could see a table with a white damask cloth; a silver-gilt inkpot, fretted, like a porcupine with pens, a fat, flat leather case for the transportation of documents and two notaries: one in black, fat, and bald-headed; one in blue uniform, with a shining monocle, and a brown moustache that he continued to twirl . . .
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