How it opens
You had landed in Boston with a portfolio, a letter, and the fixed idea that your cousins would be glad of you.
The road out of town ran between wooden fences and apple trees, and the afternoon had the cleanness of a washed plate.
Mr. WentworthYou are the son of my brother, who went to Europe and became a foreigner. I have often wondered what that meant.
It meant forty years of music and bad bargains, sir, and I am the last of the bargains.
Choose
Lay it before Mr. Wentworth and let him read it in silence.
Read it aloud yourself, giving the Baroness's voice its full value.
Give it to Gertrude, who has the most curiosity and the least authority.