Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/37

execration; it is a manner quite peculiar to Mr. Herwin. I don't pretend to know how the man does it, but he contrives to make me feel as if I had committed high treason, as if I had got entangled in a political plot against my own nature.

I wish Father would dismiss him and get another secretary.

I told him so yesterday, for I got a chance when we met in the hall, and I was going out to drive in my dove-colored cloth, trying to open my chiffon sunshade that stuck. He opened it for me—he is quite a gentleman, even when I don't choose to be quite a lady, and I will own that no invariable lady ought to have said what I said to the secretary. And the aggravating thing about it was that the secretary laughed—he laughed outright, as if I had amused him more than I could be expected to understand. He had the sunshade in his hand, and he held it over my head, and he said: "What pretty nonsense!" But he looked at the white silk and chiffon, with the sun shining through it. I was n't quite clear what he meant. I 'm not accustomed to have my sunshades called nonsense, or my language either. I never heard of a governor's secretary before who was impertinent to the governor's daughter. I can't see that Senator Herwin's having been an honest person, and dying poor,