Excerpt from The Pariah, Vol. 2 of 3 He knows a baseness in his blood At such strange war with something good; He cannot do the thing he would! The Two Voices. It was the evening of the day which witnessed Allen's humiliating experience on Hussar, and, after lingering as long over dressing as he could - for he shrank from meeting his step-mother, who might for all he could tell have seen through Bob's disguise - he entered the drawing-room. He was always a little awed on these occasions; the softened light, the delicate fragrance of the azaleas, the luxury of the room were still new and strange to him, and produced a certain sense of being an intruder - the old painful feeling of inferiority to the others, who seemed to harmonise so well with their surroundings. They were all there: Ida and Miss Henderson playing 'Reversi' under a lamp by one of the windows; Margot acting as consulting milliner to Lettice, who was dressing a doll; Mrs. Chadwick in a low chair by the fire-place, where Chadwick stood in expansive ungainliness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.