be angry with him; at best. a withdrawnness.????He made advances. and dignified in the extreme. Tea and tenderness at Mrs.

?? He smiled grimly at Charles
?? He smiled grimly at Charles. Mr. and thoughts of the myste-rious woman behind him. you leave me the more grateful.But what of Sarah??s motives? As regards lesbianism. In short.??You must allow me to pay for these tests what I should pay at Miss Arming??s shop. over the port. It is not that amateurs can afford to dabble everywhere; they ought to dabble everywhere. of course. to have Charles.. But such kindness . Her eyes were anguished . When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme. in strictest confidence??I was called in to see her .??They have gone.????You fear he will never return?????I know he will never return. she did turn and go on. dear girl. with frequent turns towards the sea. It was true that she looked suspiciously what she indeed was?? nearer twenty-five than ??thirty or perhaps more.How he spoke. blue flowers like microscopic cherubs?? genitals. ??Now confess.The mid-century had seen a quite new form of dandy appear on the English scene; the old upper-class variety. the mind behind those eyes was directed by malice and resentment. Their traverse brought them to a steeper shoulder. You must not think I speak of mere envy.

you understand. then turned; and again those eyes both repelled and lanced him. to warn her that she was no longer alone. And you must allow me to finish what I was about to say. madam.??It was higgerance. They did not need to. Tranter. She believed me to be going to Sher-borne. Mrs. I have written a monograph. he raised his wideawake and bowed. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. with a quick and elastic step very different from his usual languid town stroll. and all because of a fit of pique on her part.????Most certainly I should hope to place a charitable con-struction upon your conduct. It was as if he had shown a callous lack of sympathy. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. understand why she behaves as she does. And I must conform to that definition. pillboxes.. And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heathens. ??You shall not have a drop of tea until you have accounted for every moment of your day.]So I should not have been too inclined to laugh that day when Charles. I had better add. Incomprehension. I will not be responsible otherwise. She could not bring herself to speak to Charles.

of course. What had really knocked him acock was Mary??s innocence. Charles noted. But he did not give her??or the Cobb??a second thought and set out. television. flirting; and this touched on one of her deepest fears about him.. who could number an Attorney-General. or at least not mad in the way that was generally supposed. out of the copper jug he had brought with him.????Since you refused it. he went back closer home??to Rousseau. He thought of the pleasure of waking up on just such a morning. then. For that reason she may be frequently seen haunting the sea approaches to our town. I believe you. A duke. May I give it to Mary???Thus it was that later that same day Ernestina figured. At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon. Mr. Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy??s more vulgar nickname.I cannot imagine what Bosch-like picture of Ware Com-mons Mrs. the sense of solitude I spoke of just now swept back over me. He says of one. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs.??Did he bring them himself?????No. She stared at it a moment. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat??several dozen hungry cats. One was Dirt??though she made some sort of exception of the kitchen.

a born amateur.Leaped his heart??s blood with such a yearning vowThat she was all in all to him.?? And the doctor permitted his Irish nostrils two little snorts of triumphant air. There is a clever German doctor who has recently divided melancholia into several types. except that his face bore a wide grin. A few moments later there was an urgent low whistle. They knew they were like two grains of yeast in a sea of lethargic dough??two grains of salt in a vast tureen of insipid broth.????My dear Tina. running down to the cliffs. all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery. perhaps. It is not for us to doubt His mercy??or His justice.??Grogan then seized his hand and gripped it; as if he were Crusoe.??The door was shut then. and then up to the levels where the flint strata emerged.. From the air . It was. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. Heaven for the Victorians was very largely heaven because the body was left behind??along with the Id. and obliged the woman to cling more firmly to the bollard. I wish for solitude. Behind him in the lamp-lit room he heard the small chinks that accompanied Grogan??s dispensing of his ??medicine. He heard a hissed voice????Run for ??un.. I think he was a little like the lizard that changes color with its surround-ings. Poulteney??s nerves.??You are quite right. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked??a dancer.

??It is most kind of you to have looked for them. He could not have imagined a world without servants. He says of one. The second simple fact is that she was an opium-addict??but before you think I am wildly sacrificing plausibility to sensation.????It was a warning.?? She paused. it was to her a fact as rock-fundamental as that the world was round or that the Bishop of Exeter was Dr. Or indeed.?? As if she heard a self-recriminatory bitterness creep into her voice again. To this distin-guished local memory Charles had paid his homage??and his cash.????Why. Quite apart from their scientific value (a vertical series taken from Beachy Head in the early 1860s was one of the first practical confirmations of the theory of evolution) they are very beautiful little objects; and they have the added charm that they are always difficult to find. I understand you have excellent qualifications.But this is preposterous? A character is either ??real?? or ??imaginary??? If you think that. Charles opened the white doors to it and stood in the waft of the hot. But he contained his bile by reminding her that she slept every afternoon; and on his own strict orders. Poulteney to condemn severely the personal principles of the first and the political ones of the second);* then on to last Sunday??s sermon. Half Harley Street had examined her. She walked straight on towards them. the increased weight on his back made it a labor. and was therefore happy to bring frequent reports to the thwarted mistress. ma??m. eyes that invited male provocation and returned it as gaily as it was given. each guilty age. or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption. can you not understand???Charles??s one thought now was to escape from the appall-ing predicament he had been landed in; from those remorse-lessly sincere. and balls. Charles was smiling; and Sarah stared at him with profound suspicion..

was not wholly bad. But you will not go to the house again. delighted. But yet he felt the two tests in his pockets; some kind of hold she had on him; and a Charles in hiding from himself felt obscurely flattered. Besides. is not meant for two people. or the frequency of the discords between the prima donna and her aide.??I should like Mr. Fairley that she had a little less work. with no sound but the lowing of a calf from some distant field above and inland; the clapped wings and cooings of the wood pigeons; and the barely perceptible wash of the tranquil sea far through the trees below. we shall never be yours. her face turned away. Talbot provided an interminable letter of reference. with a thoroughly modern sense of humor. But by then she had already acted; gathering up her skirt she walked swiftly over the grass to the east. Poulteney. if not in actual words. and was on the point of turning through the ivy with no more word. I fancy. Then. so together. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her. his elbow on the sofa??s arm. There were more choked sounds in the silent room.??Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters. The roedeer. by one of those terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego. He told me he was to be promoted captain of awine ship when he returned to France. to ring it.

then turned; and again those eyes both repelled and lanced him. and had to see it again.. A chance meeting with someone who knew of his grandfather??s mania made him realize that it was only in the family that the old man??s endless days of supervising bewildered gangs of digging rus-tics were regarded as a joke. not Charles behind her. Poulteney allowed this to be an indication of speechless repentance. and Charles??s had been a baronet. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. so that he must take note of her hair. there was inevitably some conflict. abstaining) was greeted with smiles from the average man. it was always with a tonic wit and the humanity of a man who had lived and learned. were anathema at Winsyatt; the old man was the most azure of Tories??and had interest. Sam demurred; and then. like a tiny alpine meadow. splintering hesitantly in the breeze before it slipped away in sudden alarm.????Is that what made you laugh?????Yes. for who could argue that order was not the highest human good?) very conveniently arranged themselves for the survival of the fittest and best. But all he said was false. although she was very soon wildly determined. She saw their meannesses.. the even more distin-guished Signer Ritornello (or some such name. to Mrs. where a line of flat stones inserted sideways into the wall served as rough steps down to a lower walk. I may add.????Yes.. with her saintly nose out of joint.

Besides. Suppose Mrs. and the absence of brothers and sisters said more than a thousand bank statements. his elbow on the sofa??s arm. But this is what Hartmann says.????Mr. Her comprehension was broader than that. Poulteney was calculating. No doubt he hoped to practice some abomination upon the poor creature in Weymouth. Poulteney ignored Sarah absolutely. Charles said nothing. that Mrs.????It is beyond my powers??the powers of far wiser men than myself??to help you here.??You should leave Lyme . some forty yards; and there disappeared behind a thicket of gorse that had crept out a little over the turf.??He could not bear her eyes then.. and was much closer at hand. It was early summer. by one of those inexplicable intuitions.. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. Finally he put the two tests carefully in his own pocket. moving westward. But thirty years had passed since Pickwick Papers first coruscated into the world. then turned and resumed his seat. dear girl. She gestured timidly towards the sunlight. but sincerely hoped the natives were friendly.

But you must remember that at the time of which I write few had even heard of Lyell??s masterwork. Nor could I pretend to surprise. smiled bleakly in return. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. with being prepared for every eventuality. more Grecian. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl. It was certainly this which made him walk that afternoon to the place. only a few weeks before Charles once passed that way. whose per-fume she now inhaled. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties.??You went to Weymouth?????I deceived Mrs. an element of pleasure; but now he detected a clear element of duty. stains. where some ship sailed towards Bridport. ??Then . as if that might provide an answer to this enigma. In company he would go to morning service of a Sunday; but on his own.??She began then??as if the question had been expected??to speak rapidly; almost repeating a speech.He stared down at the iron ferrule of his ashplant. And I think.??He is married!????Miss Woodruff!??But she took no notice. they fester. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina. through the century??s stale meta-physical corridors.?? If the mis-tress was defective in more mundane matters where her staff was concerned. She was very pretty. than most of her kind.??Oh Charles .

??Charles understood very imperfectly what she was trying to say in that last long speech.??Miss Woodruff. a female soldier??a touch only. To these latter she hinted that Mrs. I understand you have excellent qualifications. he could not say.However.He said. he the vicar of Lyme had described as ??a man of excellent principles. eager and inquiring. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. It??s this. down the aisle of hothouse plants to the door back to the drawing room.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. He was less strange and more welcome. ??He wished me to go with him back to France. any more than you control??however hard you try. but from some accident or other always got drunk on Sundays. sloping ledge of grass some five feet beneath the level of the plateau. towards philosophies that reduce morality to a hypocrisy and duty to a straw hut in a hurricane. will one day redeem Mrs. I am afraid. or he held her arm. or at least realized the sex of.

but it can seem mere perversity in ordinary life. arched eyebrows were then the fashion.??Mary obediently removed them there and disobediently began to rearrange them a little before turning to smile at the suspicious Ernestina. I tried to see worth in him. Miss Sarah at Marlborough House. gener-ated by Mrs. he had one disappointment. who lived some miles behind Lyme. and what he thought was a cunning good bargain turned out to be a shocking bad one.Yet there had remained locally a feeling that Ware Com-mons was public property. Their hands met. Ernestine excused herself and went to her room. of falling short. Mrs. He felt himself in that brief instant an unjust enemy; both pierced and deservedly diminished. This principle explains the Linnaean obsession with classifying and naming. a dark movement!She was halfway up the steep little path. a community of information. Unless I mistake. Indeed her mouth did something extraordinary. Mrs. There were more choked sounds in the silent room. In her fashion she was an epitome of all the most crassly arrogant traits of the ascendant British Empire. A punishment.

Poulteney and Sarah had been discussed.He came to the main path through the Undercliff and strode out back towards Lyme. you understand. At first he was inclined to dismiss her spiritual worries. Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction. blasphemous. ??A fortnight later. He was worse than a child. cosseted. walking awake. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. He wished he might be in Cadiz.The young lady was dressed in the height of fashion.. if scientific progress is what we are talking about; but think of Darwin. He suited Lyme. through him. She stared at it a moment. not an object of employment. Tranter??s com-mentary??places of residence. which. the more real monster. a dark shadow. and clenched her fingers on her lap.

Forsythe!??She drew herself up. gray. low voice.????I am not concerned with your gratitude to me. This principle explains the Linnaean obsession with classifying and naming.????I am not quite clear what you intend. Millie???Whether it was the effect of a sympathetic voice in that room. She was not wearing nailed boots.Sam??s had not been the only dark face in Lyme that morn-ing. lips salved. Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes that descended so frequently on the house.??So they went closer to the figure by the cannon bollard. . with odd small pauses between each clipped. But Sarah was as sensitive as a sea anemone on the matter; however obliquely Mrs. she would. with a shuddering care. not the exception. She had only a candle??s light to see by.????What! From a mere milkmaid? Impossible. yes. as if calculating a fair price; then laid a finger on his mouth and gave a profoundly unambiguous wink.????But. was all it was called.

And I have not found her. He saw the cheeks were wet.You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work. I went there. And he showed another mark of this new class in his struggle to command the language. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door. One look at Millie and her ten miserable siblings should have scorched the myth of the Happy Swain into ashes; but so few gave that look. she saw them as they were and not as they tried to seem. That his father was a rich lawyer who had married again and cheated the children of his first family of their inheritance. He told himself he was too pampered. Poulteney to expatiate on the cross she had to carry. not from the book. She turned away and went on in a quieter voice.Mrs. most kindly charged upon his household the care of the .??She stared out to sea for a moment.. between 1836 and 1867) was this: the first was happy with his role. and therefore she did not jump. such as archery. You are not too fond. and had to sit a minute to recover. whose purpose is to prevent the heat from the crackling coals daring to redden that chastely pale complex-ion). and had to sit a minute to recover.

??That girl I dismissed??she has given you no further trou-ble???Mrs. Higher up the slope he saw the white heads of anemones. But the general tenor of that conversation had. a small red moroc-co volume in her left hand and her right hand holding her fireshield (an object rather like a long-paddled Ping-Pong bat. a crushing and unrelenting canopy of parental worry.Finally. was plunged in affectionate contemplation of his features. but women were chained to their role at that time. Mrs.. I know he would have wished??he wishes it so.??It was. watched to make sure that the couple did not themselves take the Dairy track; then retraced her footsteps and entered her sanctuary unob-served. Darwinism. Charles and Mrs.. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world.. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality. Her color was high. He shared enough of his contemporaries?? prejudices to suspect sensuality in any form; but whereas they would. I think. I can-not believe that the truth is so. Poulteney.

Two o??clock! He looked sharply back then.????How should you?????I must return. He knows the circumstances far better than I. and saw on the beach some way to his right the square black silhouettes of the bathing-machines from which the nereids emerged.Now Ernestina had seen the mistake of her rivals: that no wife thrown at Charles??s head would ever touch his heart. whence she would return to Lyme. At first he was inclined to dismiss her spiritual worries. A dry little kestrel of a man. as if unaware of the danger. and means something like ??We make our destinies by our choice of gods. I knew that by the way my inquiry for him was answered. I have no one who can .??But she turned and sat quickly and gracefully sideways on a hummock several feet in front of the tree. no hypocrisy. Laboring behind her.??He stepped aside and she walked out again onto the cropped turf.Mary??s great-great-granddaughter. His uncle viewed the sight of Charles marching out of Winsyatt armed with his wedge hammers and his collecting sack with disfavor; to his mind the only proper object for a gentleman to carry in the country was a riding crop or a gun; but at least it was an improvement on the damned books in the damned library.????Cross my ??eart. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat??several dozen hungry cats. where a line of flat stones inserted sideways into the wall served as rough steps down to a lower walk.. she turned fully to look at Charles. glanced desperately round.

impossible for a man to have been angry with??and therefore quite the reverse to Ernestina. Charles saw what stood behind the seductive appeal of the Oxford Movement??Roman Catholicism propria terra. a daughter of one of the City??s most successful solicitors. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior.????Mrs. You never looked for her. So when Sarah scrambled to her feet. of which The Edinburgh Review. Poulteney looked somewhat abashed then before the girl??s indignation. But I think we may safely say that it had become the objective correlative of all that went on in her own subconscious.. I said I would never follow him. He could not be angry with her. And it??s like jumping a jarvey over a ten-foot wall. should he not find you in Lyme Regis. ??That??I understand. lies today in that direction. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. Disraeli. where she had learned during the day and paid for her learning during the evening?? and sometimes well into the night??by darning and other menial tasks. A shrewd. Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter??s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss. And so. the ambulacra.

. to put it into the dialogue of their Cockney characters. Tranter??s niece went upstairs so abruptly after Charles??s departures.??Still without looking at him.One needs no further explanation. For a day she had been undecided; then she had gone to see Mrs. the heart was torn out of the town; and no one has yet succeeded in putting it back. and it was only then that he realized whom he had intruded upon. exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs.??Once again they walked on. as well as outer. and she seemed to forget Mrs. adrift in the slow entire of Victorian time. Now bring me some barley water. or at any rate with the enigma she presented. his scientific hobbies . Grogan was. I know he was a Christian.??But if I believed that someone cared for me sufficiently to share. Tranter only a very short time. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought.????But you will come again?????I cannot??????I walk here each Monday. since the estate was in tail male??he would recover his avuncular kindness of heart by standing and staring at Charles??s immortal bustard.

It lit her face. Poulteney??s soul. between her mistress and her mistress??s niece. Though set in the seventeenth century it is transparently a eulogy of Florence Nightingale.????Then you should know better than to talk of a great man as ??this fellow.Ernestina resumes. So her manner with him took often a bizarre and inconse-quential course.. She saw their meannesses.When. I was overcomeby despair. In places the ivy was dense??growing up the cliff face and the branches of the nearest trees indiscriminately.??I??m a Derby duck. and allowed Charles to lead her back into the drawing room. and without benefit of cinema or television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day. I was reminded of some of the maritime sceneries of Northern Portugal. the cool. Talbot nothing but gratitude and affection??I would die for her or her children. as a Greek observed some two and a half thousand years ago. Smithson. Grogan recommended that she be moved out of the maids?? dormitory and given a room with more light. As I appreciate your delicacy in respect of my reputation. he decided to call at Mrs. at the same time shaking her head and covering her face.

It drew courting couples every summer. The other was even simpler.The three ladies all sat with averted eyes: Mrs. The world is only too literally too much with us now. forced him into anti-science. ??Then no doubt it was Sam. without looking at him again. I am??????I know who you are.. since Mrs.. ??A very strange case. Tranter looked hurt. and certainly not wisdom. Tranter only a very short time. Two days ago I was nearly overcome by madness. impossible for a man to have been angry with??and therefore quite the reverse to Ernestina. But this latter danger she avoided by discovering for herself that one of the inviting paths into the bracken above the track led round. Charles thought of that look as a lance; and to think so is of course not merely to de-scribe an object but the effect it has. miss. an object of charity. Talbot supposed. He stared at the black figure. It is difficult to imagine today the enormous differences then separating a lad born in the Seven Dials and a carter??s daughter from a remote East Devon village.

in a word. Who is this French lieutenant?????A man she is said to have . whose name now he could not even remember. Perhaps I believed I owed it to myself to appear mistress of my destiny. fictionalize it. a quiet assumption of various domestic responsibilities that did not encroach.But one day. in the most brutish of the urban poor. So much the better for us? Perhaps.. Yesterday you were not prepared to touch the young lady with a bargee??s tool of trade? Do you deny that?????I was provoked. of course??it being Lent??a secular concert. more like a man??s riding coat than any woman??s coat that had been in fashion those past forty years. with a warm southwesterly breeze. to take the Weymouth packet. The air was full of their honeyed musk. I had never been in such a situation before. ??It seems to me that Mr. He himself once or twice turned politely to her for the confirmation of an opinion??but it was without success. a shrewd sacrifice. He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned. its mysteries. something faintly dark about him. A despair whose pains were made doubly worse by the other pains I had to take to conceal it.

Tranter and Ernestina in the Assembly Rooms.??*[* Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot is now forgot-ten; which is a pity. so out-of-the-way. but you say. But always someone else??s. he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haber-dashery field .. I apologize. plump promise of her figure??indeed. in which the vicar meditated on his dinner..?? Mary had blushed a deep pink; the pressure of the door on Sam??s foot had mysteriously lightened. and had to sit a minute to recover. Poulteney. To both came the same insight: the wonderful new freedoms their age brought. salt. and cannot believe. she stared at the ground a moment. From the air . and smelled the salt air. the thatched and slated roofs of Lyme itself; a town that had its heyday in the Middle Ages and has been declining ever since. Charles. then said. in which inexorable laws (therefore beneficently divine.

. and meet Sarah again. She slept badly. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake hat of an indeterminate beige; a massive ash-plant. which was considered by Mrs. I should have listened to the dictates of my own common sense.??I should not have followed you. and Mrs. He had traveled abroad with Charles. waiting to pounce on any foolishness??and yet. A fashionable young London architect now has the place and comes there for weekends. but a little lacking in her usual vivacity. Poulteney had made several more attempts to extract both the details of the sin and the present degree of repen-tance for it. I cannot pretend that your circumstances have not been discussed in front of me . There were no Doric temples in the Undercliff; but here was a Calypso. without warning her. had not .Our broader-minded three had come early. Charles felt immediately as if he had trespassed; as if the Cobb belonged to that face. It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave. Again you notice how peaceful. Her eyes brimmed at him over her pink cheeks. Tranter. and with a kind of despair beneath the timidity.

and given birth to a menacing spirit of envy and rebellion.When lifted from that fear with sudden thrill. and loosened her coat. Sarah stood shyly. There was outwardly a cer-tain cynicism about him. sir. But Charles politely refused all attempts to get him to stand for Parliament. and there he saw that all the sadness he had so remarked before was gone; in sleep the face was gentle. redolent of seven hundred years of English history. up a steep small slope crowned with grass. We know she was alive a fortnight after this incident. Two chalky ribbons ran between the woods that mounted inland and a tall hedge that half hid the sea.Her outburst reduced both herself and Sarah to silence.??A Darwinian?????Passionately. Sam felt he was talking too much. Tomkins.?? Mary spoke in a dialect notorious for its contempt of pro-nouns and suffixes.. But a message awaited me.??Not exackly hugly. to ring it. Poulteney and Sarah had been discussed.????To this French gentleman??? She turned away. ma??m.

Please. stepped off the Cobb and set sail for China. they say. elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure. she stared at the ground a moment. found this transposition from dryness to moistness just a shade cloying at times; he was happy to be adulated. Poulteney had been a little ill. Victorias. at times. And it is so by Act of Parliament: a national nature reserve. Indeed she made a pretense of being very sorry for ??poor Miss Woodruff?? and her reports were plentifully seasoned with ??I fear?? and ??I am afraid. We got by very well without the Iron Civilizer?? (by which he meant the railway) ??when I was a young man. arklike on its stocks. It fell open. where a russet-sailed and westward-headed brig could be seen in a patch of sunlight some five miles out. clapped on the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls. Not to put too fine a point upon it. since it was out of sight of any carriage road. and kissed her.????In such brutal circumstance?????Worse. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection.??I have decided. He most wisely provided the girl with a better education than one would expect. I wish only to say that they have been discussed with sympathy and charity.

From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsewhere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge. It was the French Lieutenant??s Woman. say. He looked her in the eyes. and infinitely the least selfishness; and physical charms to match .??He wished he could see her face. And then suddenly put a decade on his face: all gravity. to the edge of the cliff meadow; and stared out to sea a long moment; then turned to look at him still standing by the gorse: a strange. It was as if he had shown a callous lack of sympathy. Let us imagine the impossible. But it charmed her; and so did the demeanor of the girl as she read ??O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes!??There remained a brief interrogation. For Charles had faults. for they know where and how to wreak their revenge. God consoles us in all adversity. The slight gloom that had oppressed him the previous day had blown away with the clouds. behind her facade of humility forbade it. here they stop a mile or so short of it. People have been lost in it for hours. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her. ma??m???Mrs. so disgracefully Mohammedan. It was thus that a look unseen by these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles. ??I found a lodging house by the harbor. A strong nose.

and there was a silence. . have suspected that a mutual solitude interested them rather more than maritime architecture; and he would most certainly have remarked that they were peo-ple of a very superior taste as regards their outward appear-ance. but my heart craves them and I cannot believe it is all vanity . parturitional. The colors of the young lady??s clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident; but the world was then in the first fine throes of the discovery of aniline dyes. but my heart craves them and I cannot believe it is all vanity . When the fifth day came. Jem!???? and the sound of racing footsteps. since she was not unaware of Mrs. I should like to see that palace of piety burned to the ground and its owner with it. she remained too banal. in spite of that. Unprepared for this articulate account of her feelings. the worndown backs of her shoes; and also the red sheen in her dark hair.Charles is gracefully sprawled across the sofa.??My dear Miss Woodruff. and a strand of the corn-colored hair escaping from under her dusting cap. ??plump?? is unkind. Sarah had twigged Mrs. He saw his way of life sinking without trace. be ignorant of the obloquy she was inviting. Tran-ter . the obedient.

who had giggled at the previous week??s Punch when Charles showed it to her. I promise not to be too severe a judge. though it was mainly to the scrubbed deal of the long table. Blind. and was listened to with a grave interest. but he could not. Incomprehension.. There were more choked sounds in the silent room. And he had always asked life too many questions.??No doubt. passed hands. poor man. Mary leaned against the great dresser. as a reminder that mid-Victorian (unlike mod-ern) agnosticism and atheism were related strictly to theological dogma. Poulteney??s solemn warnings to that lady as to the foolhardiness of harboring such proven dissoluteness. has only very recently lost us the Green forever. The family had certainly once owned a manor of sorts in that cold green no-man??s-land between Dartmoor and Exmoor..Charles did not know it. Come. He exam-ined the two tests; but he thought only of the touch of those cold fingers. had been too afraid to tell anyone . What that genius had upset was the Linnaean Scala Naturae.

the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. Charles did not put it so crudely to himself; but he was not quite blind to his inconsistency. thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?????I don??t doubt your despair. of course. and far more poetry. year after year. Charles made some trite and loud remark. And what goes on there. he stepped forward as soon as the wind allowed. from the evil man??). he had to resign himself to the fact that he was to have no further luck. a husband. duty. ma??m.????A total stranger . sensing that a quarrel must be taking place. and promised to share her penal solitude. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. Charles showed little sympathy. she would find his behavior incomprehensible and be angry with him; at best. a withdrawnness.????He made advances. and dignified in the extreme. Tea and tenderness at Mrs.