"
She heard her voice saying: "It isn't worth reading--it's too
silly to read--I never saw such rubbish--it oughtn't to be
allowed to be printed."
He took the book from her.
"'Leonora,'" he read, "'sat pensive and alone. Before her lay the
rich champaign of Tuscany, dotted over with many a smiling
village. The season was spring.'"
Miss Lavish knew, somehow, and had printed the past in draggled
prose, for Cecil to read and for George to hear.
"'A golden haze,'" he read. He read: "'Afar off the towers of
Florence, while the bank on which she sat was carpeted with
violets. All unobserved Antonio stole up behind her--'"
Lest Cecil should see her face she turned to George and saw his
face.
He read: "'There came from his lips no wordy protestation such as
formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from
the lack of it. He simply enfolded her in his manly arms.'"
"This isn't the passage I wanted," he informed them. "there is
another much funnier, further on.
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