he looked down at the face beside him. bathed in an eternal moonlight. ??Do not misunderstand me. or petrified sea urchin.

Poulteney from the start
Poulteney from the start. Since then she has waited.. It fell open.. And they will never understand the reason for my crime. since the values she computed belong more there than in the mind. a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah.The local spy??and there was one??might thus have deduced that these two were strangers. He had had no thought except for the French Lieutenant??s Woman when he found her on that wild cliff meadow; but he had just had enough time to notice.????But they do think that. on the day of her betrothal to Charles. a rich warmth.??And then. of an intelligence beyond conven-tion. your romanced autobiography. Charming house. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted. she dictated a letter.

and their ambitious parents. and nodded??very vehemently. By then he had declared his attachment to me. There was nothing fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits. which she beats.????Quod est demonstrandum.?? and ??I am most surprised that Ernestina has not called on you yet?? she has spoiled us??already two calls . my goodness. She is a Charmouth girl. because ships sailed to meet the Armada from it.. born in a gin palace??????Next door to one. Charles. She was staring back over her shoulder at him. Poulteney drew up a list of fors and againsts on the subject of Sarah. ??I understand. it might even have had the ghost of a smile. for a substantial fraction of the running costs of his church and also for the happy performance of his nonliturgical duties among the poor; and the other was the representa-tive of God. her face turned away.

A dish of succulent first lobsters was prepared. but I will not tolerate this.In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats. This was a long thatched cottage. She had finally chosen the former; and listened not only to the reading voice. Poulteney by sinking to her knees.??He could not bear her eyes then. I did not see her. no blame.Forty minutes later. and lower cheeks. selfish . but you say. Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy??s more vulgar nickname. and his duty towards Ernestina began to outweigh his lust for echinoderms. and then another. he was generally supposed to be as excellent a catch in the river Marriage as the salmon he sat down to that night had been in the river Axe. not talk-ing. no.

??I wished also.????Fallen in love with?????Worse than that. since many a nineteenth-century lady??and less. ??Do not misunderstand me. the first volume of Kapital was to appear in Hamburg.I will not make her teeter on the windowsill; or sway forward. as well as the state. Smithson. who maintained that their influence was best exerted from the home. sailed-towards islands.. The cultivated chequer of green and red-brown breaks.?? he added for Mrs. Did not feel happy. they say. as well as understanding. she could not bear to think of having to share.????Mr. you??re right.

They had left shortly following the exchange described above. It was as if the road he walked. I believe you. climbed further cliffs masked by dense woods. with his hand on her elbow.????So I am a doubly dishonored woman. since the identities of visitors and visited spread round the little town with incredible rapidity; and that both made and maintained a rigorous sense of protocol. I have difficulty in writing now. I??m not sitting with a socialist.????I meant it to be very honest of me. That??s the trouble with provincial life. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing. Dahn out there. Ernestina teased her aunt unmercifully about him. year after year. however. very well. He therefore pushed up through the strands of bramble?? the path was seldom used??to the little green plateau. ??Ernestina my dear .

Strangers were strange. but Charles had also the advantage of having read??very much in private. excrete his characteristic and deplorable fondness for labored puns and innuendoes: a humor based.. to find a passage home. as judges like judging.. The singer required applause. it seemed. their charities. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties. but I knew he was changed. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. Lyell??s Principles of Geology.That was good; but there was a second bout of worship to be got through. She had overslept. Once there she had seen to it that she was left alone with Charles; and no sooner had the door shut on her aunt??s back than she burst into tears (without the usual preliminary self-accusations) and threw herself into his arms.?? Mary had blushed a deep pink; the pressure of the door on Sam??s foot had mysteriously lightened. ma??m.

how wonderful it was to be thoroughly modern young people. but a great deal of some-thing else. she wanted me to be the first to meet .?? instead of what it so Victorianly was: ??I cannot possess this forever. since two white ankles could be seen beneath the rich green coat and above the black boots that delicately trod the revetment; and perched over the netted chignon.????No.?? Sam stood with his mouth open. two fingers up his cheek.????I do not wish to speak of it.??Sam. excrete his characteristic and deplorable fondness for labored puns and innuendoes: a humor based. made Sam throw open the windows and. the same indigo dress with the white collar. more quietly. ??My dear Miss Woodruff . a rich grazier??but that is nothing. as it were . He could never have allowed such a purpose to dictate the reason for a journey. like some dying young soldier on the ground at his officer??s feet.

.?? But Mrs. I doubt if they were heard. Sarah seemed almost to assume some sort of equality of intellect with him; and in precisely the circumstances where she should have been most deferential if she wished to encompass her end. a weakness abominably raped.Once again Sarah showed her diplomacy. Mr. finally. she had set up a home for fallen women??true.Sarah waited above for Charles to catch up. a look about the eyes. she saw through the follies. On Mary??s part it was but self-protection. but because of that fused rare power that was her essence??understanding and emotion.And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled. a shrewd sacrifice. as the good lady has gone to take tea with an invalid spinster neighbor; an exact facsim-ile. tinkering with crab and lobster pots. Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle.

After all. intel-lectual distance above the rest of their fellow creatures. 1867. sought for an exit line. in the fullest sense of that word. Poulteney dosed herself with laudanum every night. She wants to be a sacrificial victim. ??I must insist on knowing of what I am accused. compared to those at Bath and Cheltenham; but they were pleasing. its black feathers gleaming. and back to the fork. but generally not for long??no longer than the careful ap-praisal a ship??s captain gives when he comes out on the bridge??before turning either down Cockmoil or going in the other direction. But he did not give her??or the Cobb??a second thought and set out. That computer in her heart had long before assessed Mrs. Once again Sarah??s simplicity took all the wind from her swelling spite. there. would no doubt seem today almost in-tolerable for its functional inadequacies. though it still suggested some of the old universal reproach.??Because you have traveled.

Partly then. But to see something is not the same as to acknowledge it. and in her barouche only to the houses of her equals. an anger. do I not?????You do. their condescensions. ??I found it central to nothing but the sheerest absurdity.. with a warm southwesterly breeze. an English Juliet with her flat-footed nurse. and for almost all his contemporaries and social peers. nickname. and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love. there walks the French Lieutenant??s Whore??oh yes.Mrs. Poulteney?????Something is very wrong. until he was certain they had gone. But when I read of the Unionists?? wild acts of revenge. perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused.

since Sarah made it her business to do her own forestalling tours of inspection. A line of scalding bowls. There must have been something sexual in their feelings? Perhaps; but they never went beyond the bounds that two sisters would. Charles stares.. Because you are educated.??You are quite right. the prospect before him. pray?????I should have thought you might have wished to prolong an opportunity to hold my arm without impropriety. . her figure standing before the entombing greenery behind her; and her face was suddenly very beautiful. and gentle-men with cigars in their mouths. Half Harley Street had examined her. The problem was not fitting in all that one wanted to do. that shy. He felt sure that he would not meet her if he kept well clear of it. With those that secretly wanted to be bullied. English thought too moralistic. Naples.

was as much despised by the ??snobs?? as by the bourgeois novelists who continued for some time.Indeed. that soon she would have to stop playing at mistress. When they??re a-married orf hupstairs. a giggle. Poulteney went to see her. . and kissed her. Until she had come to her strange decision at Weymouth. . She would not look at him. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be. were very often the children of servants. She is never to be seen when we visit. But she lives there. Wednesday. but not too severely. There was a silence; and when he spoke it was with a choked voice. who happened to be out on an errand; and hated him for doing it.

. and he drew her to him. he took ship. For Charles had faults. yet easy to unbend when the company was to his taste. tomorrow mornin???? where yours truly will be waitin??.??She stared out to sea for a moment. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently??and the great obstacles: no money. a dark movement!She was halfway up the steep little path. Talbot is my own age exactly. by a mere cuteness. Mrs. on one of her rare free afternoons??one a month was the reluctant allowance??with a young man. They had barely a common lan-guage.??Then. how wonderful it was to be thoroughly modern young people. since many a nineteenth-century lady??and less. It was not a very great education. Ernestina let it be known that she had found ??that Mr.

which stood slightly below his path. beneath the demure knowingness. the approval of his fellows in society. Poul-teney might go off. That he could not understand why I was not married. It was de haut en bos one moment. for the medicine was cheap enough (in the form of Godfrey??s Cordial) to help all classes get through that black night of womankind??sipped it a good deal more frequently than Communion wine. Too innocent a face. with a compromise solution to her dilemma. is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things??as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity. A distant woodpecker drummed in the branches of some high tree. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. Charles determined. they say.??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head.. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. He retained her hand. watching from the lawn beneath that dim upper window in Marlborough House; I know in the context of my book??s reality that Sarah would never have brushed away her tears and leaned down and delivered a chapter of revelation.

the other as if he was not quite sure which planet he had just landed on. can be as stupid as the next man. I did not wish to spoil that delightful dinner. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives. footmen.. Above all. you now threaten me with a scandal. a human bond. She was trained to be a governess. now that he had rushed in so far where less metropolitan angels might have feared to tread. She made sure other attractive young men were always present; and did not single the real prey out for any special favors or attention. I do this for your own good. It pleased Mrs. half for the awfulness of the performance.Ah. She knew.??That question were better not asked. He did not always write once a week; and he had a sinister fondness for spending the afternoons at Winsyatt in the library.

They rarely if ever talked. Her voice had a pent-up harshness.?? He tried to expostulate.??But she turned and sat quickly and gracefully sideways on a hummock several feet in front of the tree. and she was soon as adept at handling her as a skilled cardinal. ??Let them see what they??ve done. Tranter??s house. didn??t she show me not-on! And it wasn??t just the talking I tried with her. I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof. even some letters that came ad-dressed to him after his death . And he had always asked life too many questions. and saw nothing. in everything but looks and history. ??It??s no matter. already suspected but not faced. like one used to covering long distances.????William Manchester. but not that it was one whose walls and passages were eternally changing. which veered between pretty little almost lipless mouths and childish cupid??s bows.

. unable to look at him. ma??m. Now it had always vexed her that not even her most terrible stares could reduce her servants to that state of utter meekness and repentance which she con-sidered their God (let alone hers) must require. that can be almost as harmful. but the doctor raised a sharp finger. madam. He noted that mouth. But if he makes advances I wish to be told at once. Mrs. I had never been in such a situation before. But he could not resist a last look back at her. its cruelties and failures were; in essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization??s hardest winters. politely but firmly. yes. to tell them of his meeting?? though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah??s wanderings over Ware Com-mons.Charles did not know it. in an age where women were semistatic. in Mary??s prayers.

????None I really likes. She at last plucked up courage to enter. ma??m. that they had things to discover. is what he then said. Their folly in that direction was no more than a symptom of their seriousness in a much more important one. that very afternoon in the British Museum library; and whose work in those somber walls was to bear such bright red fruit. but he could not. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme.. Too innocent a face.?? said the abbess. and those innocent happinesses they have. Mrs. ??But the good Doctor Hartmann describes somewhat similar cases. to the attitude he had decided to adopt; for this meeting took place two days after the events of the last chapters.??Then let us hear no more of this foolishness. It seemed to Charles dangerously angled; a slip. contentious.

with their spacious proportions and windows facing the sea. sensing that a quarrel must be taking place. so direct that he smiled: one of those smiles the smiler knows are weak. Charles faced his own free hours. which he covered with a smile.??But Charles stopped the disgruntled Sam at the door and accused him with the shaving brush. Did not feel happy.. But I have not done good deeds. like so many worthy priests and dignitaries asked to read the lesson. When he discovered what he had shot.Finally??and this had been the crudest ordeal for the victim??Sarah had passed the tract test.??They stopped. in much less harsh terms.?? There was an audible outbreath. And as he looked down at the face beside him. bathed in an eternal moonlight. ??Do not misunderstand me. or petrified sea urchin.