The Beckoning Hand
And Other Stories: Large Print
Description:... I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see the French plays which werethen being acted by Marie Leroux's celebrated Palais Royal company. I wasn't at thetime exactly engaged to poor Irene: it has always been a comfort to me that I wasn'tengaged to her, though I knew Irene herself considered it practically equivalent toan understood engagement. We had known one another intimately from childhoodupward, for the Lathams were a sort of second cousins of ours, three timesremoved: and we had always called one another by our Christian names, and beenvery fond of one another in a simple girlish and boyish fashion as long as we couldeither of us remember. Still, I maintain, there was no definite understandingbetween us; and if Mrs. Latham thought I had been paying Irene attentions, shemust have known that a young man of two and twenty, with a decent fortune and anice estate down in Devonshire, was likely to look about him for a while before hethought of settling down and marrying quietly.
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