XXVI
Mr. Severance--the courtesy title at least is due him--seems to be a man
with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with
another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance or
somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite end
of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and reading
Dickens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked drawer of
his desk.
The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached,
depending on their sex, the other Mrs. Severance an admirable hostess--and
yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be enjoying himself
as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel give-and-take of
dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for publication and what
he thinks.
"Well, Frazee, I'll be ready to go into that loan matter with you inside a
month," says his voice, and his mind "Frazee, you slippery old burglar, it
won't be a month before you'll be spreading the news that my disappearance
means suicide and that the Commercial is rotten, lock, stock and barrel.
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