A Born Aristocrat Author:Matthew White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. A SERIES OF REPULSES. The offices of the Knickerbocker Insurance Company were close at hand. Barbara walked towards them listlessly. Somehow her inter... more »view with Mr. Randolph had left a bad taste in her mouth, to put it metaphorically. They were evidently very busy that morning at the Knickerbocker, and it was some time before Barbara could find any one to take in her letter of introduction. Finally the colored man came hastily through the hallway and she preferred her request, handing over the note. " Yes'm, I'll see'm," mumbled the darky, and made off, leaving the caller standing there. And it was at this instant that she heard her name pronounced in accents of delighted surprise : " Miss Van Dyke, don't you remember me ? " She was puzzled for an instant to know from where the voice proceeded, as there was no one at the moment in the corridor save herself. Then, turning her head, through the wicket in the glasspartition of the clerks' quarters she saw Allan Thurwell. As by magic the walls of that big insurance building on bustling Broadway melted away, and acres of Adirondack woods took their place. But they were only the background to the mental picture that swiftly rose before her. There was the boat on the lake, in which she had sat so many times during that fortnight two summers before, while the young man whose handsome head she now saw framed by the clerk's window rowed her lazily beneath outspreading trees or close to lofty boulders, the while they talked of many things and grew to think they knew each other well. And this was the first time she had seen him since. For an instant she forgot her dejection of spirits, lost sight of the errand on which she had come. "It is awfully nice to see you again, Mr. Thurwell," she said,...« less