town and village in this land.??Charles! Now Charles.

his heart beating
his heart beating. as if it might be his last. Her conduct is highly to be reprobated. Tranter out of embarrassment. understand why she behaves as she does. Charles could not tell. and a strand of the corn-colored hair escaping from under her dusting cap.??What you call my obstinacy is my only succor. I was first of all as if frozen with horror at the realization of my mistake??and yet so horrible was it . Above all. I understand she has been doing a littleneedlework. P. as if there was no time in history. stopping search. He knew he was overfastidious.. and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded. with the consequence that this little stretch of twelve miles or so of blue lias coast has lost more land to the sea in the course of history than almost any other in England. rich in arsenic. as you will see??confuse progress with happiness. that such social occasions were like a hair shirt to the sinner. with all her contempt for the provinces. Not even the sad Victorian clothes she had so often to wear could hide the trim. and looked him in the eyes. He began to feel in a better humor. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. ??He was very handsome.

Her eyes were suddenly on his.??The vicar gave her a solemn look. But I prefer you to be up to no good in London. if you wish to change your situation. ??how disgraceful-ly plebeian a name Smithson is. the prospect before him. noting and grateful. whereupon her fragile little hand reached out and peremptorily pulled the gilt handle beside her bed.??If I should.Laziness was. Mary had modestly listened; divined this other Sam and divined that she was honored to be given so quick a sight of it.All would be well when she was truly his; in his bed and in his bank . He was especially solicitous to Ernestina. looking at but not seeing the fine landscape the place commanded.????I am not quite clear what you intend. I think that is very far from true. So hard that one day I nearly fainted. he was all that a lover should be. Poachers slunk in less guiltily than elsewhere after the pheasants and rabbits; one day it was discovered. She had fine eyes. but he had the born naturalist??s hatred of not being able to observe at close range and at leisure. ??You may wonder how I had not seen it before. and dropped it.????I was a Benthamite as a young man. His answers to her discreetly playful interrogations about his past conquests were always discreetly playful in return; and that was the rub. You imagine perhaps that she would have swollen. Perhaps I always knew. I am not seeking to defend myself.

??Varguennes became insistent. he would have lost his leg. ??This is what comes of trying to behave like a grown-up. yet with head bowed. but Sarah??s were strong. But I am not marrying him. on one of her rare free afternoons??one a month was the reluctant allowance??with a young man. . And by choice. As she lay in her bedroom she reflected on the terrible mathematical doubt that increasingly haunted her; whether the Lord calculated charity by what one had given or by what one could have afforded to give. at the foot of the little bluff whose flat top was the meadow. was his intended marriage with the Church. But thirty years had passed since Pickwick Papers first coruscated into the world. Very dark. had claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary standing on a deboulis beside his road . naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. was plunged in affectionate contemplation of his features. had a poor time of it for many months.When the front door closed. and he drew her to him. Hit must be a-paid for at once. Behind him in the lamp-lit room he heard the small chinks that accompanied Grogan??s dispensing of his ??medicine.She murmured. and began to comb her lithe brown hair. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. where the tunnel of ivy ended. He bowed and stepped back. and back to the fork.

albeit with the greatest reluctance????She divined. on. she dictated a letter.??Still without looking at him.??Varguennes recovered. Talbot tried to extract the woman??s reasons. of course??it being Lent??a secular concert. I do not know. with the declining sun on his back. P. If he returns. the lamb would come two or three times a week and look desolate.????He is deceased?????Some several years ago. With those that secretly wanted to be bullied.??Sam. Poulteney had ever heard of the word ??lesbian??; and if she had. poor girl; and had it not been for Sarah. a constant smile. the sense of solitude I spoke of just now swept back over me. mending their nets.??She possessed none. will one day redeem Mrs. A pursued woman jumped from a cliff. Smithson has already spoken to me of him. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach. as Coleridge once discovered.?? He bowed and left the room. her back to him.

??Place them on my dressing table. wild-voiced beneath the air??s blue peace. Charles wished he could draw.. was still faintly under the influence of Lavater??s Physiognomy.She knew Sarah faced penury; and lay awake at nights imagining scenes from the more romantic literature of her adolescence. on the day of her betrothal to Charles. in spite of Mrs. and the rare trees stayed unmolested.????Come come. He murmured. once again that face had an extraordinary effect on him. however innocent in its intent .Having duly admired the way he walked and especially the manner in which he raised his top hat to Aunt Tranter??s maid. It was very brief. because I request it. Their hands met. miss. can any pleasure have been left? How. Many younger men. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. I didn?? ask??un. small person who always wore black. He searched on for another minute or two; and then. Tranter??s. It seemed to him that he had hardly arrived. Tranter??s on his way to the White Lion to explain that as soon as he had bathed and changed into decent clothes he would . do I not?????You do.

He looked her in the eyes. as she pirouetted. as the case might require. essentially counters in a game. he did not argue. a liar. but I was in tears. but she did not turn. as if it were some expiatory offering. ??It was noisy in the common rooms. And their directness of look??he did not know it. Very well. He could not imagine what. in which the vicar meditated on his dinner. so quickly that his step back was in vain.????Is that what made you laugh?????Yes. terms synony-mous in her experience with speaking before being spoken to and anticipating her demands. or blessed him. at Mrs.??What you call my obstinacy is my only succor. You know very well what you have done. since the land would not allow him to pass round for the proper angle. Mrs. of knowing all there was to know about city life??and then some. But his generation were not altogether wrong in their suspicions of the New Britain and its statesmen that rose in the long economic boom after 1850. which made them seem strong. perhaps even a pantheist.??Gosse was here a few years ago with one of his parties of winkle-picking bas-bleus.

Spiders that should be hibernating run over the baking November rocks; blackbirds sing in December. He stared after her several moments after she had disappeared. Not all the vicars in creation could have justified her husband??s early death to her. ??I fancy that??s one bag of fundamentalist wind that will think twice before blowing on this part of the Dorset littoral again. and to Tina??s sotto voce wickednesses with the other. They were enormous. It did not intoxicate me. ??Permit me to insist??these matters are like wounds. There is One Above who has a prior claim.]This was perceptive of Charles. in their different ways.??The vicar felt snubbed; and wondered what would have happened had the Good Samaritan come upon Mrs.??Mrs.??Silence. only to wake in the dawn to find the girl beside her??so meekly-gently did Millie. Most probably it was because she would.I will not make her teeter on the windowsill; or sway forward. since the later the visit during a stay. and disap-probation of. Suddenly she looked at Charles. he knew. my knowledge of the spoken tongue is not good. Not-on. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. It is many years since anything but fox or badger cubs tumbled over Donkey??s Green on Midsummer??s Night. as if that was the listener. clean. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning.

on one of her rare free afternoons??one a month was the reluctant allowance??with a young man.In Broad Street Mary was happy. Poulteney. And there she is. Now why in heaven??s name must you always walk alone? Have you not punished yourself enough? You are young. had that been the chief place of worship. . lived very largely for pleasure . and became entangled with that of a child who had disappeared about the same time from a nearby village. out of sight of the Dairy. a correspond-ing twinkle in his eyes. but he had the born naturalist??s hatred of not being able to observe at close range and at leisure. because Monmouth landed beside it . with being prepared for every eventuality. it was another story. She gestured timidly towards the sunlight. After all. I??ave haccepted them.The pattern of her exterior movements??when she was spared the tracts??was very simple; she always went for the same afternoon walk. person returns; what then???But again Sarah did the best possible thing: she said nothing. Poulteney.. She did not. And I am powerless.Charles sat up. And what the feminine. He sits up and murmurs. Let me finish.

and used often by French seamen and merchants.Finally??and this had been the crudest ordeal for the victim??Sarah had passed the tract test.He murmured. a room his uncle seldom if ever used. Furthermore I have omitted to tell you that the Frenchman had plighted his troth. And Miss Woodruff was called upon to interpret and look after his needs. so often brought up by hand. a very striking thing. of course. Usually she came to recover from the season; this year she was sent early to gather strength for the marriage. and which hid her from the view of any but one who came. had pressed the civic authorities to have the track gated. lies today in that direction. Tranter and her two young companions were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting. They felt an opportunism. a rider clopped peacefully down towards the sea. impossible for a man to have been angry with??and therefore quite the reverse to Ernestina. But he had sternly forbidden himself to go anywhere near the cliff-meadow; if he met Miss Woodruff.For one terrible moment he thought he had stumbled on a corpse. Sam. He had intended to write letters. as a naval officer himself. It had not. Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working. ??Varguennes became insistent. all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio. by drawing from those pouched. were shortsighted.

I understand you have excellent qualifications. Perhaps it was the gloom of so much Handel and Bach.??Shall I continue?????You read most beautifully.????He asked you to marry him???She found difficulty in answering. which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. Poulteney to expatiate on the cross she had to carry. charming . but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment. to her fixed delusion that the lieutenant is an honorable man and will one day return to her.??Sarah took her cue. Poulteney turned to look at her. though she could not look. he gave her a brief lecture on melancholia??he was an advanced man for his time and place??and ordered her to allow her sinner more fresh air and freedom. ??Eighty-eight days. In one place he had to push his way through a kind of tunnel of such foliage; at the far end there was a clearing. Ernestina delivered a sidelong. who still kept traces of the accent of their province; and no one thought any the worse of them. a cook and two maids.????She is then a hopeless case?????In the sense you intend.????She is then a hopeless case?????In the sense you intend. Charles adamantly refused to hunt the fox.. Poulteney.It was an evening that Charles would normally have en-joyed; not least perhaps because the doctor permitted himself little freedoms of language and fact in some of his tales.??Would I have . adzes and heaven knows what else.Everything had become simple. in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind.

It was a kind of suicide. He found a pretty fragment of fossil scallop.?? Still Sarah was silent. ??All I ask is that you meet me once more. it was hard to say. to haunt Ware Commons. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. the second suffered it. Poulteney might pon-derously have overlooked that.The morning. Each age. But he ended by bowing and smiling urbanely. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. But then he came to a solution to his problem??not knowing exactly how the land lay??for yet another path suddenly branched to his right.The pattern of her exterior movements??when she was spared the tracts??was very simple; she always went for the same afternoon walk. a biased logic when she came across them; but she also saw through people in subtler ways.????Have you never heard speak of Ware Commons?????As a place of the kind you imply??never. Be ??appier ??ere. you are poor by chance. on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity. was masculine??it gave her a touch of the air of a girl coachman.??The vicar gave her a solemn look. no. do you remember the Early Cretaceous lady???That set them off again; and thoroughly mystified poor Mrs. Charles rose and looked out of the window. swooning idyll. if cook had a day off.????For finding solitude.

But I count it not the least of the privileges of my forthcoming marriage that it has introduced me to a person of such genuine kindness of heart. of course. I know this is madness.?? Sam looked resentfully down; a certain past cynicism had come home to roost. luringly.?? He obeyed her with a smile. black. sweetly dry little face asleep beside him??and by heavens (this fact struck Charles with a sort of amaze-ment) legitimately in the eyes of both God and man beside him.. Charles noted the darns in the heels of her black stockings. but there was one matter upon which all her bouderies and complaints made no im-pression.??I. This spy. You will always be that to me. That was no bull.????If they know my story. And you forget that I??m a scientist. I hope so; those visions of the contented country laborer and his brood made so fashionable by George Morland and his kind (Birket Foster was the arch criminal by 1867) were as stupid and pernicious a sentimentalization. we shall never be yours. people of some taste. can expect else.??He wished he could see her face. Poulteney began. and she was soon as adept at handling her as a skilled cardinal. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him. and was therefore at a universal end. with odd small pauses between each clipped..

??I understand. ??Respectability is what does not give me offense. low voice. an English Garden of Eden on such a day as March 29th. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent. And there was her reserve. as if she wished she had not revealed so much.Yet among her own class. with free-dom our first principle. Even if Charles had not had the further prospects he did. with the credit side of the ac-count. that can be almost as harmful.????Their wishes must be obeyed. in short?????You must understand we talked always in French. But you could offer that girl the throne of England??and a thousand pounds to a penny she??d shake her head..??There was a silence.Leaped his heart??s blood with such a yearning vowThat she was all in all to him. He said it was less expensive than the other. ??But I fear it is my duty to tell you. It was true that she looked suspiciously what she indeed was?? nearer twenty-five than ??thirty or perhaps more. since he could see a steep but safe path just ahead of him which led up the cliff to the dense woods above. she inclined her head and turned to walk on. Come. cheap travel and the rest. But his generation were not altogether wrong in their suspicions of the New Britain and its statesmen that rose in the long economic boom after 1850. He unbuttoned his coat and took out his silver half hunter.??Never mind now.

??She turned then and looked at Charles??s puzzled and solici-tous face.????He made advances. A schoolboy moment. condemned. and none too gently. with frequent turns towards the sea. even in her happier days.Perhaps you suppose that a novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner; and produce on request a thorough analysis of their motives and intentions. ??I am merely saying what I know Mrs. the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants. Poulteney put her most difficult question. in England. but one from which certain inexplicable errors of taste in the Holy Writ (such as the Song of Solomon) had been piously excised??lay in its off-duty hours. By which he means. He was shrewd enough to realize that Ernestina had been taken by surprise; until the little disagree-ment she had perhaps been more in love with marriage than with her husband-to-be; now she had recognized the man. I say her heart. Charles remembered then to have heard of the place. It was as if the road he walked. since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely); what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image.Thus she had evolved a kind of private commandment?? those inaudible words were simply ??I must not????whenever the physical female implications of her body. Were tiresome. and he was therefore in a state of extreme sexual frustration.??I know lots o?? girls. flirting; and this touched on one of her deepest fears about him. She was not wearing nailed boots.At approximately the same time as that which saw this meeting Ernestina got restlessly from her bed and fetched her black morocco diary from her dressing table. then bent to smell it. ??I was called in??all this.

but a great deal of some-thing else. Two old men in gaufer-stitched smocks stood talking opposite. But she lives there. 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. Again her bonnet was in her hand. on. He was taken to the place; it had been most insignificant. She felt he must be hiding something??a tragic French countess. blush-ing. Poulteney had been dictating letters. and she smiled at him. But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; if this is a novel. yes. Her color deepened. an element of pleasure; but now he detected a clear element of duty.The visitors were ushered in. for loved ones; for vanity. a petrified mud in texture. You do not bring the happiness of the many by making them run before they can walk. into a dark cascade of trees and undergrowth. that confine you to Dorset.??I have come to bid my adieux. He reflect-ed. He remained closeted with Sarah a long time. bounded on all sides by dense bramble thickets. I think. of course.????But I can guess who it is.

. of limitation..??I hasten to add that no misconduct took place at Captain Talbot??s. He winked again; and then he went.When the next morning came and Charles took up his un-gentle probing of Sam??s Cockney heart. more serious world the ladies and the occasion had obliged them to leave. On the Cobb it had seemed to him a dark brown; now he saw that it had red tints. He said finally he should wait one week. But that??s neither here nor the other place. flint implements and neolithic graves. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked??a dancer. He smiled. First and foremost would undoubtedly have been: ??She goes out alone. at the same time shaking her head and covering her face. Sam? In twenty-four hours???Sam began to rub the washstand with the towel that was intended for Charles??s cheeks. The cottage walls have crumbled into ivied stumps. the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants. by the mid-century.But we started off on the Victorian home evening. Poulteney put her most difficult question.??By jove.??I must go. and began to laugh. as his father had hoped. They bubbled as the best champagne bubbles.????Yes. No occasion on which the stopping and staring took place was omitted; but they were not frequent.

repressed a curse. They found themselves. moved ahead of him. but it will do. Suppose Mrs. and directed the words into him with pointed finger. at the house of a lady who had her eye on him for one of her own covey of simperers. but this she took to be the result of feminine vanity and feminine weak-ness. snowy. for (unlike Disraeli) he went scrupulously to matins every Sunday. nor had Darwin himself. with his hand on her elbow. her very pretty eyes. the day she had thought she would die of joy. her son is in India??; while another voice informed him tersely. I??ll show yer round. de has en haut the next; and sometimes she contrived both positions all in one sentence. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her.??Her only answer was to shake her head. sloping ledge of grass some five feet beneath the level of the plateau. but Ernestina would never allow that.It was an evening that Charles would normally have en-joyed; not least perhaps because the doctor permitted himself little freedoms of language and fact in some of his tales. in fact. but emerged in the clear (voyant trop pour nier. She is employed by Mrs. I think we are not to stand on such ceremony. should have handed back the tests. in short.

and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty??a condition Aunt Tranter mercifully escaped by just one year??Ernestina turned back into her room. . when Mrs. Smithson..?? At that very same moment.. tinkering with crab and lobster pots. reproachful glance; for a wild moment he thought he was being accused himself??then realized. a skill with her needle. and resting over another body. that it was in cold blood that I let Varguennes have his will of me. a thin. in short.This was the echinoderm. It was the French Lieutenant??s Woman. and dream.. as usual in history.She looked up at once. The razor was trembling in Sam??s hand; not with murderous intent. He looked down in his turn. choked giggles that communicated themselves to Charles and forced him to get to his feet and go to the window. For a long moment she seemed almost to enjoy his bewilderment. If you so wish it. to her. in truth. He had touched exactly that same sore spot with his uncle.

His listener felt needed. His father had died three months later. Suddenly she looked at Charles. But there was a minute tilt at the corner of her eyelids. his scientific hobbies ... Tranter looked hurt.??He smiled at her timid abruptness.Once again Sarah showed her diplomacy. The two ladies were to come and dine in his sitting room at the White Lion. an English Garden of Eden on such a day as March 29th. repressed a curse. She gestured timidly towards the sunlight.Charles is gracefully sprawled across the sofa. were an agree-able compensation for all the boredom inflicted at other times. he rarely did. He retained her hand. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. sailed-towards islands.The door was opened by Mary; but Mrs. I must point out that his relationship with Sam did show a kind of affection. I am a horrid. I cannot bear the thought. that were not quite comme il faut in the society Ernestina had been trained to grace. and dreadful heresies drifted across the poor fellow??s brain?? would it not be more fun. Insipid her verse is. and there he saw that all the sadness he had so remarked before was gone; in sleep the face was gentle.

let open the floodgates to something far more serious than the undermining of the Biblical account of the origins of man; its deepest implications lay in the direction of determinism and behaviorism. Poulteney flinched a little from this proposed wild casting of herself upon the bosom of true Christianity. better. Her opinion of herself required her to appear shocked and alarmed at the idea of allowing such a creature into Marlborough House. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change.??If she springs on you I shall defend you and prove my poor gallantry. of The Voyage of the Beagle. There was a small scatter of respecta-ble houses in Ware Valley.??Madam!??She turned. most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect. He had. perhaps had never known.. it is a good deal more forbidding than it is picturesque.Charles was horrified; he imagined what anyone who was secretly watching might think. and with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia had been ??shamefully neglected.????I wish to walk to the end.. and Mary she saw every day. Mr. the memory of the now extinct Chartists. One he calls natural. Sam??s love of the equine was not really very deep. Grogan was. Poulteney put her most difficult question. Poulten-ey told her. not myself. were anathema at Winsyatt; the old man was the most azure of Tories??and had interest.

Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter??s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss. to be near her father.?? Charles could not see Sam??s face. naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. Intelligent idlers always have. when Charles came out of Mrs. He could see that she was at a loss how to begin; and yet the situation was too al fresco. yellowing. on educational privilege. making a rustic throne that commanded a magnificent view of the treetops below and the sea beyond them. but women were chained to their role at that time. no mask; and above all.. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English.One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is de-structive neurosis; in his century it was tranquil boredom.??And now Grogan. smiled bleakly in return. The world is only too literally too much with us now. that such social occasions were like a hair shirt to the sinner. since she was not unaware of Mrs. A distant woodpecker drummed in the branches of some high tree.??He glanced sharply down.??There was a silence. At the foot of the south-facing bluff. but it seemed unusually and unwelcomely artifi-cial. Poulteney may have real-ized. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. .

????It seemed to me that it gave me strength and courage . But fortunately she had a very proper respect for convention; and she shared withCharles??it had not been the least part of the first attraction between them??a sense of self-irony. But this new taradiddle now??the extension of franchise. for parents. They could not conceal an intelligence.??Mrs. Tranter??s. all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery. was the corollary of the collapse of the ladder of nature: that if new species can come into being. since he had a fine collection of all the wrong ones. Poulteney was inwardly shocked. or blessed him. Poulteney may have real-ized. Her conduct is highly to be reprobated. perhaps to show Ernestina how to say boo to a goose. sir. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. At Cam-bridge. freezing to the timid. Breeding and self-knowledge.. who was a Methodist and therefore fond of calling a spade a spade.Unlit Lyme was the ordinary mass of mankind. though she could not look. if Romeo had not mercifully appeared on the scene that previ-ous winter. only the outward facts: that Sarah cried in the darkness. charming . though not true of all.

And I do not want my green walking dress. Let us turn. of the importance of sea urchins.. Now I want the truth. Smithson.. who walk in the law of the Lord. yellowing.Gradually he worked his way up to the foot of the bluffs where the fallen flints were thickest. a husband.. Poulteney??s presence. Lyme Regis being then as now as riddled with gossip as a drum of Blue Vinny with maggots. He went down a steep grass slope and knocked on the back door of the cottage. Such a place was most likely to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area. He smiled at her. Varguennes had gone to sea in the wine commerce. Now will you please leave your hiding place? There is no impropriety in our meeting in this chance way.000 males. television. Thirdly. he called.??I will not have French books in my house. and Charles installed himself in a smaller establishment in Kensington.Dr. and disap-probation of. as if she wanted to giggle.

????But.??He accordingly described everything that had happened to him; or almost everything.. It is that . local residents. after his fashion. ??Then no doubt it was Sam.??Ernestina had exactly the right face for her age; that is.????How delicate we??ve become. That??s not for me. . Mary had modestly listened; divined this other Sam and divined that she was honored to be given so quick a sight of it.Charles paused before going into the dark-green shade beneath the ivy; and looked round nefariously to be sure that no one saw him. Poulteney??s face a fortnight before. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down. He says of one.Ernestina??s elbow reminded him gently of the present. Charles was not pleased to note. if you had turned northward and landward in 1867. which loom over the lush foliage around them like the walls of ruined castles. The slight gloom that had oppressed him the previous day had blown away with the clouds. He had indeed very regular ones??a wide forehead. Smithson. the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought. but the figure stood mo-tionless. Yet behind it lay a very modern phrase: Come clean.The grog was excellent. two excellent Micraster tests.

To her amazement Sarah showed not the least sign of shame.?? again she shook her head. Certainly she had regulated her will to ensure that the account would be handsomely balanced after her death; but God might not be present at the reading of that document. when Sam drew the curtains.But she heard Aunt Tranter??s feet on the stairs. steeped in azure. and for almost all his contemporaries and social peers. they fester. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. It had begun. and this was something Charles failed to recognize. came back to Mrs. This stone must come from the oolite at Portland. which hid the awkward fact that it was also his pleasure to do so. But the way the razor stopped told him of the satisfactory shock administered.The second. the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought. Ernestina allowed dignity to control her for precisely one and a half minutes. And I have not found her. an added sweet. like most of the rest of the audience; for these concerts were really enjoyed??in true eighteenth-century style??as much for the company as for the music. Ernestina had already warned Charles of this; that he must regard himself as no more than a beast in a menagerie and take as amiably as he could the crude stares and the poking umbrellas. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent. that lends the area its botanical strangeness??its wild arbutus and ilex and other trees rarely seen growing in England; its enormous ashes and beeches; its green Brazilian chasms choked with ivy and the liana of wild clematis; its bracken that grows seven. who is reading. where Ernest-ina??s mother sat in a state of the most poignant trepidation. In secret he rather admired Gladstone; but at Winsyatt Gladstone was the arch-traitor. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion.

He began to frequent the conversazioni of the Geological Society.?? She began to defoliate the milkwort.There were.Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days??the Old Fossil Shop.. wrappings. I do. In any case. kind lady knew only the other. He told me he was to be promoted captain of awine ship when he returned to France.?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. under Mrs. and it was only then that he realized whom he had intruded upon. the low comedy that sup-ported his spiritual worship of Ernestina-Dorothea. overfastidious. Deep in himself he forgave her her unchastity; and glimpsed the dark shadows where he might have enjoyed it himself. in a very untypical way. Tranter chanced to pass through the hall??to be exact. inclined almost to stop and wait for her. He had the knack of a certain fervid eloquence in his sermons; and he kept his church free of crucifixes. and sat with her hands folded; but still she did not speak. propped herself up in bed and once more turned to the page with the sprig of jasmine. the dimly raucous cries of the gulls roosting on the calm water. but why I did it. say. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. But she had a basic solidity of character. Once there.

????But presumably in such a case you would. and a strand of the corn-colored hair escaping from under her dusting cap. But the duenna was fast asleep in her Windsor chair in front of the opened fire of her range. But as in the lane she came to the track to the Dairy she saw two people come round a higher bend. like a man about to be engulfed by a landslide; as if he would run. The inn sign??a white lion with the face of an unfed Pekinese and a distinct resemblance. with exotic-looking colonies of polypody in their massive forks.??If only poor Frederick had not died. ????Ave yer got a bag o?? soot????? He paused bleakly.To be sure.Nor did Ernestina. Her lips moved. His leg had been crushed at the first impact. silent co-presence in the darkness that mattered. since there are crevices and sudden falls that can bring disaster. It was de haut en bos one moment. He had thrust the handsome bouquet into the mischievous Mary??s arms. as he had sweated and stumbled his way along the shore. between us is quite impossible in my present circumstances. and had to see it again. And yet once again it bore in upon him. Smithson.. a thunderous clash of two brontosauri; with black velvet taking the place of iron cartilage. the approval of his fellows in society. which I am given to understand you took from force of circumstance rather than from a more congenial reason. She had exactly sevenpence in the world. His answers to her discreetly playful interrogations about his past conquests were always discreetly playful in return; and that was the rub.

She had overslept. Her parents would not have allowed her to. lived in by gamekeepers. I attend Mrs. She sank back against the corner of the chair. But the great ashes reached their still bare branches over deserted woodland. having duly crammed his classics and subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles. since it lies well apart from the main town. But in a way the matter of whether he had slept with other women worried her less than it might a modern girl.??I never found the right woman. I am well aware that that is your natural condition.????How should you?????I must return. He had realized she was more intelligent and independent than she seemed; he now guessed darker quali-ties. he could not believe its effect. and just as Charles came out of the woodlands he saw a man hoying a herd of cows away from a low byre beside the cottage. Her opinion of herself required her to appear shocked and alarmed at the idea of allowing such a creature into Marlborough House. and gentle-men with cigars in their mouths. Each time she read it (she was overtly reading it again now because it was Lent) she felt elevated and purified. Gosse was. Melancholia as plain as measles.. not authority. with exotic-looking colonies of polypody in their massive forks. Poulteney??s life. But her eyes had for the briefest moment made it clear that she made an offer; as unmistakable.But the most serious accusation against Ware Commons had to do with far worse infamy: though it never bore that familiar rural name. as others suffer in every town and village in this land.??Charles! Now Charles.