The Octave of Claudius Author:Barry Pain General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1897 Original Publisher: Harper Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select f... more »rom more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. "YES," said Harry Burnage . to himself, "I must marry Angela." He paced up and down the soft carpet, thinking about it. He was alone in his well-ordered chambers, smoking a cigarette that was not to be bought in shops. It was a good cigarette, but its flavour was as nothing to the fact that it was not to be bought in shops. It seemed to fill the room with that atmosphere of uniqueness, distinction, speciality, that Henry Burnage believed that he loved. He had arrived slowly at his resolution; he rarely hurried important things; he liked to act correctly; and, though he would say a passably brilliant thing about the commercial spirit and the middle classes, he very much liked to get on in the world. He had been consideringmarriage with Angela Wycherley as one might consider anonymous journalism -- in a critical spirit, weighing the arguments for and against. That was the way he had begun at least. Angela's mother was barely possible. She was too large, too obvious, too good-tempered, and she gave too much publicity to that side of her which should have been reserved for the specialist in dyspepsia. Her circle included too generously. Well, once married, Henry Burnage felt that Mrs. Wycherley could be deleted altogether. Then there was her father -- a mildly commercial person, whose Sunday night anxiety (unless he had one of those headaches) seemed to be first to find the background, and then to sit in it. He would not need to be deleted, he would delete himself. He would probably do something for Angela. The commerce was only mildly successful, but Angela was the...« less