They went briskly, and at the
end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in
tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of his tight but
patent-leather boots.
A mile and a half on the way to Mentone they turned aside down a road
into the hills. He followed them for a while over the loose stones and
along the ruts of the roadway with considerable pain, and was on the
very point of abandoning the pursuit when he came on Dorothy and Elsie
sitting in a shady dell by the roadside, from which the wooded slopes
of the hills rose steeply. Careless of his boots and of the fact that
they had suffused his face with an unbecoming purple, he strode
gallantly up to them, and set about making Dorothy's acquaintance. He
began by talking, with an airy graciousness, of the charm of the spot
in which he had found her, and of how greatly that charm was enhanced
by her presence. But soon, seeing that she took not the slightest
notice of him, that her eyes, to all seeming, looked through him at the
trees on the further side of the dell, he lost his gracious air, and
began to halt and stumble in his speech. Then he lost his head and
plunged into a detailed account of the passion with which Dorothy's
beauty had inflamed his heart, wearing the while his finest air of a
conqueror dictating terms.
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