The Dugdale Millions — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VY. SIGNOR BARBERINI. In the seclusion of the room assigned him as a sleeping apartment, Dick reviewed the events of the day. The singular attitude of Bessie toward him engrossed much of his thought. Beside an open window in an easy-chair en déshabille, with lighted cigar, he endeav- ored to reason to adetermination. After his talk with Wallis, he had experienced a sensation of elation. Upon consideration, however, that sensation faded away. He could not bring himself to a belief that Wallis’s interpretation of Bessie’s strange manner and conduct ‘was the true one. He recalled Bessie’s words, manner, and expression, and tried to square them with the meaning Wallis put upon them and failed. The trouble was he sought to judge Bessie’s treatment of himself by masculine standards. Result—a mud- dle and a fixed error. If, he argued, Bessie were angry with him because he had undertaken the search, for the reason Wallis gave, why did she not say so directly, and charge him openly with unfriendliness. Asif a bludgeon was a woman’s weapon! He would have done so had their positions been reversed, was his blundering conclusion. With that fatuity of a man who had never been tested and tried by the close associations with the subtleties and indirections of the feminine mind, he satisfied himself that there were too many irreconcil- able points, for him to accept Wallis’s interpretation. If she were angry with him only because she thought 42. Comicboocl< C@ 3