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Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips), 1866-1946

"A Millionaire of Yesterday"

"
"It's more luck than anything," he said. "I've stood next door to
ruin twice. I may again, although I'm a millionaire to-day."
She looked at him curiously - at his ugly tweed suit, his yellow
boots, and up into the strong, forceful face with eyes set in deep
hollows under his protruding brows, at the heavy jaws giving a
certain coarseness to his expression, which his mouth and forehead,
well-shaped though they were, could not altogether dispel. And at
he same time he looked at her, slim, tall, and elegant, daintily
clothed from her shapely shoes to her sailor hat, her brown hair,
parted in the middle, escaping a little from its confinement to
ripple about her forehead, and show more clearly the delicacy of
her complexion. Trent was an ignorant man on many subjects, on
others his taste seemed almost intuitively correct. He knew that
this girl belonged to a class from which his descent and education
had left him far apart, a class of which he knew nothing, and with
whom he could claim no kinship. She too was realising it - her
interest in him was, however, none the less deep. He was a type of
those powers which to-day hold the world in their hands, make
kingdoms tremble, and change the fate of nations. Perhaps he was
all the more interesting to her because, by all the ordinary
standards of criticism, he would fail to be ranked, in the jargon
of her class, as a gentleman.


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