A Splendid Sin Author:Grant Allen General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1896 Original Publisher: F.V. White Subjects: Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / General Literary Criticism / American / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. W... more »hen you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VII MATRIMONIAL BUSINESS At breakfast next morning, Fede wore the white rose Hubert had pinned the night before into her evening bodice. It had somehow unaccountably got crushed meanwhile -- behind the rhododendrons ; but it revived in water, and looked almost as well as ever in the pretty pink blouse she wore down to breakfast . Only Mrs Egremont (being a woman) noticed its tumbled condition, and mentally accounted for it with a motherly smile; for Mrs Egremont had been young, and was young enough still to sympathise with lovers. Fede certainly was charming. The mixture of the hot Italian woman and the bright English girl in her made a delicious compound. ' A co-inheritor on one side with Dante and Giotto,' Hubert said; 'a co-inheritor on the other with Shakespeare and Darwin.' As she smiled across the table, with a flush of timidity on her dark olive cheek, at her future mother-in-law, Julia Egremont felt she had never yet seen any girl so attractive. It is seldom one's children choose the wives one thinks fit for them; but if Mrs Egremont had been asked to select for Hubert, she could not have picked out anyone more to her taste than Fede. 'And then just look at her antecedents,' Hubert said to her with pride, when they met in their salon three minutes before breakfast . ' Could anyone have a better or finer record ? Her father is a Torna- buoni; and you've only to look at him to see at a glance he is straight, and well-built, and noble, and honourab...« less