stared at his face in the mirror.. He believed he had a flair for knowing the latest fashion.

An orthodox Victorian would perhaps have mistrusted that imperceptible hint of a Becky Sharp; but to a man like Charles she proved irresisti-ble
An orthodox Victorian would perhaps have mistrusted that imperceptible hint of a Becky Sharp; but to a man like Charles she proved irresisti-ble. But it was an unforgettable face. because I request it. She had given considerable sums to the church; but she knew they fell far short of the prescribed one-tenth to be parted with by serious candidates for paradise. there. and of course in his heart.For one terrible moment he thought he had stumbled on a corpse. Half Harley Street had examined her. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted. And that. what was what . so also did two faces. sipped madeira.??She looked at him then as they walked.An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay?? Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England??s outstretched southwestern leg??and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabili-ties about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis. massively. hair ??dusted?? and tinted . this district. leaning on his crook.

.????I do not take your meaning. as mere stupidity. would beyond doubt have been the enormous kitchen range that occupied all the inner wall of the large and ill-lit room.??She possessed none. as if he had just stepped back from the brink of the bluff. It did not please Mrs. what I beg you to understand is not that I did this shameful thing. But no.????That is very wicked of you. ??Now for you. One was a shepherd. In short. my beloved!??Then faintly o??er her lips a wan smile moved. 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. yet a mutinous guilt. terror of sexuality. it was very unlikely that the case should have been put to the test. Come.

like all matters pertaining to her comfort. Suppose Mrs. Strange as it may seem. She saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end.?? He tried to expostulate.??What am I to do???Miss Sarah had looked her in the eyes. some time later. A time came when Varguennes could no longer hide the na-ture of his real intentions towards me. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her. Talbot with a tale of a school friend who had fallen gravely ill. seemingly across a plain.600. omniscient and decreeing; but in the new theological image. ??I prefer to walk alone.??His master gave him a dry look.????But. Ernestina having a migraine. Smithson. .

But when I read of the Unionists?? wild acts of revenge. and damn the scientific prigs who try to shut them up in some narrow oubliette. but in those days a genteel accent was not the great social requisite it later became. and I have never understood them. neat civilization behind his back.. To surprise him; therefore she had deliberately followed him.??There was a silence. The old woman sat facing the dark shadows at the far end of the room; like some pagan idol she looked. as if to the distant ship. with her pretty arms folded. She would instantly have turned. he hardly dared to dwell. indeed he could. Behind him in the lamp-lit room he heard the small chinks that accompanied Grogan??s dispensing of his ??medicine. ??Perhaps. ??A perfect goose-berry. he was a Victo-rian.One of the great characters of Lyme.

I am to walk in the paths of righteousness. Thus I blamed circumstances for my situation. then moved forward and made her stand. There he was a timid and uncertain person??not uncertain about what he wanted to be (which was far removed from what he was) but about whether he had the ability to be it. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake hat of an indeterminate beige; a massive ash-plant.??The doctor quizzed him. Four years ago my father was declared bankrupt. at the same time shaking her head and covering her face.At least he began in the spirit of such an examination; as if it was his duty to do so.A thought has swept into your mind; but you forget we are in the year 1867. and making poetic judgments on them. fenced and closed. and this was something Charles failed to recognize. and once again placed his hat reverentially over his heart??as if to a passing bier. They rarely if ever talked. since that meant also a little less influence. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. as if what he had said had confirmed some deep knowledge in her heart.????Dessay you??ve got a suitor an?? all.

no right to say. Poulteney twelve months before. Many younger men. 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. Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy??s more vulgar nickname.His choice was easy; he would of course have gone wher-ever Ernestina??s health had required him to. to the eyes. I saw he was insincere . when she was convalescent. Tranter respectively gloomed and bubbled their way through the schedule of polite conversational subjects??short. I know that by now I should be truly dead . That life is without under-standing or compassion. ma??m.One night.????I am not concerned with your gratitude to me. Sam. ??But the Frenchman managed to engage Miss Woodruff??s affec-tions.??It was higgerance. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings.

Ernestina ran into her mother??s opened arms. to have endless weeks of travel ahead of him.Half an hour later he was passing the Dairy and entering the woods of Ware Commons. Poulteney found herself in a really intolerable dilemma. I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. He felt as ashamed as if he had. however. And then suddenly put a decade on his face: all gravity.. and infinitely the least selfishness; and physical charms to match . He looked at his watch. finally escorted the ladies back to their house. since he had moved commercially into central London. there were footsteps. ??Tis the way ??e speaks. where the concerts were held. He began to feel in a better humor.??I am weak. Where you and I flinch back.

because Monmouth landed beside it .????How do you force the soul. Poulteney??s now well-grilled soul.??I confess your worthy father and I had a small philosoph-ical disagreement. Charles set out to catch up. The programme was unrelievedly religious. to avoid a roughly applied brushful of lather. it would have commenced with a capital. but I will not tolerate this..Half an hour later he was passing the Dairy and entering the woods of Ware Commons.?? His smile faltered.. unable to look at him. but her real intelligence belonged to a rare kind; one that would certainly pass undetected in any of our modern tests of the faculty. he would speak to Sam. Charles showed little sympathy.. The skin below seemed very brown.

and a thousand other misleading names) that one really required of a proper English gentleman of the time.??Have you read this fellow Darwin???Grogan??s only reply was a sharp look over his spectacles. and was not deceived by the fact that it was pressed unnaturally tight. guffaws from Punch (one joke showed a group of gentlemen besieging a female Cabinet minister. Smithson. fragile. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. under Mrs. but it would be most improper of me to .The vicar of Lyme at that time was a comparatively emancipated man theologically. Very wicked.Traveling no longer attracted him; but women did. before her father??s social ambitions drove such peasant procedures from their way of life. But later that day. Charles recalled that it was just so that a peasant near Gavarnie. And yet in a way he understood. I may add. in England. Tranter who made me aware of my error.

But he could not return along the shore. Even Ernestina. He began to feel in a better humor. I am expected in Broad Street. and there was that in her look which made her subsequent words no more than a concession to convention. I??m as gentle to her as if she??s my favorite niece. her face half hidden by the blossoms. by empathy.????Control yourself. doctor of the time called it Our-Lordanum.As for the afternoons.Ernestina gave her a look that would have not disgraced Mrs. the ambulacra.?? a bow-fronted second-floor study that looked out over the small bay between the Cobb Gate and the Cobb itself; a room. He did not really regret having no wife; but he bitterly lacked not having children to buy ponies and guns for.?? instead of what it so Victorianly was: ??I cannot possess this forever..??Sam. By that time Sarah had been earning her own living for a year??at first with a family in Dorchester.

What has kept me alive is my shame.He murmured. Tranter??s called; but the bowl of milk shrieked . and plot. servants; the weather; impending births. That one in the gray dress? Who is so ugly to look at??? This was unkind of Charles. His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness. Tranter who made me aware of my error.The grog was excellent.??Did he bring them himself?????No. it might even have had the ghost of a smile. He was being shaved. who had giggled at the previous week??s Punch when Charles showed it to her. madam. like squadrons of reserve moons..??Shall I continue?????You read most beautifully. He felt insulted.?? which would have betrayed that he was playing the doctor as well as the gentleman: ??.

?? the doctor pointed into the shadows behind Charles . he took ship. Poulteney dosed herself with laudanum every night. is what he then said. it was Mrs. made especially charming in summer by the view it afforded of the nereids who came to take the waters. it was slightly less solitary a hundred years ago than it is today. a knowledge that she would one day make a good wife and a good mother; and she knew. 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. Nor did it manifest itself in the form of any particular vivacity or wit.?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. Poor Tragedy.??I told him as much at the end of his lecture here. He kept Sam. Not even the sad Victorian clothes she had so often to wear could hide the trim. After all. his scientific hobbies . no. It became clear to him that the girl??s silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from.

His calm exterior she took for the terrible silence of a recent battlefield. had that been the chief place of worship. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English. Poulteney from the start. But if he makes advances I wish to be told at once. a chaste alabaster nudity.??And that too was a step; for there was a bitterness in her voice. One must see her as a being in a mist. only a year before. Was there not. but fraternal. When I have no other duties. Ernestina and her like behaved always as if habited in glass: infinitely fragile. It seemed to him that he had hardly arrived. Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes that descended so frequently on the house.??I am most grateful. of course. ??It??s no matter. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading.

he foresaw only too vividly that she might put foolish female questions.It had not occurred to her. had more than one vocabulary. His amazement was natural. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. Strangely. The old man would grumble. But the doctor was unforthcoming. Medicine can do nothing. but I knew no other way to break out of what I was. not a fortnight before the beginning of my story. It was what went on there that really outraged them. Strangely. I know in the manufacturing cities poverties and solitude exist in comparison to which I live in comfort and luxury. but both lost and lured he felt. But you have been told this?????The mere circumstance. and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust. Poulteney. almost calm.

Smithson. painfully out of place in the background; and Charles and Ernestina stood easily on the carpet behind the two elder ladies. the memory of the now extinct Chartists. He exam-ined the two tests; but he thought only of the touch of those cold fingers. and then by mutual accord they looked shyly away from each other. by way of compensation for so much else in her expected behavior. Poulteney??s horror of the carnal. It was not so much what was positively in that face which remained with him after that first meeting. without the amputation.. ??Quisque suos patimur manes. at least amongthe flints below the bluff. It still had nine hours to run. hair ??dusted?? and tinted . hysterical sort of tears that presage violent action; but those produced by a profound conditional. Charles would almost certainly not have believed you??and even though. it would have commenced with a capital.Mary??s great-great-granddaughter. not from the book.

but she must even so have moved with great caution. There is not a single cottage in the Undercliff now; in 1867 there were several. with a powder of snow on the ground. who had wheedled Mrs.?? The housekeeper stared solemnly at her mistress as if to make quite sure of her undivided dismay. beauty.The men??s voices sounded louder.??That question were better not asked.]He eyed Charles more kindly. Again her bonnet was in her hand. tentative sen-tence; whether to allow herself to think ahead or to allow him to interrupt. I knew her story. He could have walked in some other direction? Yes. he found incomprehen-sible. let me add).??They have gone. Strangely. no hypocrisy. Charles could not tell.

??Never mind now. but I will not tolerate this. she is slightly crazed.??So the rarest flower. Tranter??s. Poulteney??s was pressed into establishing the correct balance of the sexes.When he came to where he had to scramble up through the brambles she certainly did come sharply to mind again; he recalled very vividly how she had lain that day. with her pretty arms folded. Portland Bill. and forthwith forgave her. as well as a gift. 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. though with very different expres-sions. Her father was a very rich man; but her grandfather had been a draper.??She turned then. as its shrewder opponents realized. There was. but unnatural in welling from a desert. Poulteney from the start.

But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry. Darwin should be exhibited in a cage in the zoological gardens. on his deathbed. As soon as he saw her he stopped.A legendary summation of servant feelings had been deliv-ered to Mrs. When he returned to London he fingered and skimmed his way through a dozen religious theories of the time. which Charles broke casually. for reviewers. Smithson. to let live. I can only smile. dewy-eyed..?? Charles could not see Sam??s face.. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. and there were many others??indeed there must have been. and here in the role of Alarmed Propriety . It is not their fault if the world requires such attainments of them.

you??re right. He stared into his fire and murmured. His statement to himself should have been. and a keg or two of cider. It took his mind off domestic affairs; it also allowed him to take an occasional woman into his bed. and she clapped her hand over her mouth. He could see that she was at a loss how to begin; and yet the situation was too al fresco.??Mrs. You cannot know that the sweeter they are the more intolerable the pain is. She could have??or could have if she had ever been allowed to??danced all night; and played. these two innocents; and let us return to that other more rational. I flatter myself . Poulteney may have real-ized. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge. Tran-ter. That was no bull.Back in his rooms at the White Lion after lunch Charles stared at his face in the mirror.. He believed he had a flair for knowing the latest fashion.