Gentle readers, I am sorry for the slow progress. When I was hesitant to start NaNo, this was the very week I feared: tech week for our show. Still, here are a few words.
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A moment later he was in the room, and Mrs. Jennings was making the introduction. How curious it was, to exchange courtesies with a man with a love child! Mrs. Dashwood wondered how often she had made polite conversation with someone with a guilty secret. Perhaps everyone had something to hide, and it had been naive of her all her life to assume that everyone’s life had been as uneventful as hers. And yet, not so: had she not worn the heart of a man who had been in love once before? Was she not even now a widow, cast out of her happy home and forced to rely on the kindness of relatives? But this was no secret, because it was all known to Sir John, and even now Colonel Brandon was saying, “Sir John tells me that you are well-settled in Barton Cottage, and that he has never met such a charming family of ladies in all his life.”
“Sir John’s enthusiasm carries him astray,” Mrs. Dashwood replied, smiling, “for he forgets his own dear wife and mother-in-law.”
“Never in life!” Mrs. Jennings exclaimed. “Lady M. was always too stiff to be charming, and with me the less said the better — though I’m not one to say less. Charlotte is the best of us, would you not say, Colonel?”
“No one can meet Mrs. Palmer without being pleased by her cheerful manner,” said Colonel Brandon, bowing, and try as she might, Mrs. Dashwood could detect no furrowed brow, no flash of eye or flush of cheek, no hint of thwarted love.
“Mrs. Jennings tells me that you have been in the East Indies, Colonel Brandon,” said Mrs. Dashwood, sitting at a small table near the window. “I would dearly love to hear about parts unknown, for I have never traveled, and my life has been most unthrilling.”
Colonel Brandon sat at the table too. “I am in Mrs. Jennings’s debt,” he said, “for otherwise I would would have been compelled to tell you myself that I had been in the East Indies as one of my few pieces of conversation, and I could not have made it sound half as exciting as she must have done.” His glance toward Mrs. Jennings was amiable, but Mrs. Dashwood wondered if there wasn’t a hint of concern, as if he was wondering what else Mrs. Jennings might have said.
“There now!” Mrs. Jennings exclaimed. “Own I’ve done you a service, Colonel.”
“You have already heard me admit it, ma’am,” said the Colonel.
“I cannot believe,” said Mrs. Dashwood with smile and a shake of her head, “that there is so little romance in the far side of the world that you could make it sound uninteresting. For those always confined to the small circle of home, there is no friend as fascinating as one who can tell of distant lands.”
“And yet for the exile,” said Colonel Brandon, with the hint of a smile of his own, “there is no friend as fascinating as one who can tell of home.”
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