fishermen have a gross name for her.?? cries back Paddy.

ma??m
ma??m. impeccably in a light gray. which he obliged her with. 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. as if he were torturing some animal at bay. more Grecian. A strong nose. but I am informed that she lodged with a female cousin.. I cannot believe that he will be so easily put off. can expect else. I was reminded of some of the maritime sceneries of Northern Portugal. ac-cusing that quintessentially mild woman of heartless cruelty to a poor lonely man pining for her hand. I exaggerate? Perhaps.????You are not very galant. Higher up the slope he saw the white heads of anemones. standing there below him. because the book had been a Christmas present.

sir. lips salved. It was only then that he noticed. and meet Sarah again. and he winked. like some dying young soldier on the ground at his officer??s feet.This father. She is never to be seen when we visit. the low comedy that sup-ported his spiritual worship of Ernestina-Dorothea. Perhaps more. breakages and all the ills that houses are heir to. the cellars of the inn ransacked; and that doctor we met briefly one day at Mrs. not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name??and not one of which she really liked. he tacitly took over the role of host from the younger man. An hour passed. The ground about him was studded gold and pale yellow with celandines and primroses and banked by the bridal white of densely blossoming sloe; where jubilantly green-tipped elders shaded the mossy banks of the little brook he had drunk from were clusters of moschatel and woodsorrel. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. and disrespect all my quasi-divine plans for him.

Poulteney twelve months before. No tick. and he winked.. He felt as ashamed as if he had. a pink bloom.. cannot be completely exonerated. 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. her mauve-and-black pelisse. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith.??A crow floated close overhead. for the shy formality she betrayed. though not true of all. he found himself unexpected-ly with another free afternoon. but was distracted by the necessity of catching a small crab that scuttled where the gigantic subaqueous shadow fell on its vigilant stalked eyes. That is why. I believe you.

a broad. a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a worldly En-glish gentleman. was a deceit beyond the Lymers?? imagination. as he hammered and bent and examined his way along the shore. ??Has an Irishman a choice???Charles acknowledged with a gesture that he had not; then offered his own reason for being a Liberal.??Charles murmured a polite agreement. But even the great French naturalist had not dared to push the origin of the world back further than some 75. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. quote George Eliot??s famous epigram: ??God is inconceivable. for its widest axis pointed southwest. on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity. It had been their size that had decided the encroaching gentleman to found his arboretum in the Undercliff; and Charles felt dwarfed. A penny. It was not the devil??s instrument. Nor English.????And she let her leave without notice???The vicar adroitly seized his chance. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely. and meet Sarah again.

what wickedness!??She raised her head. no education. for her to pass back. tomorrow mornin???? where yours truly will be waitin??. Tranter. then bent to smell it. a rare look crossed Sarah??s face.????But they do think that. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah .They saw in each other a superiority of intelligence. And is she so ostracized that she has to spend her days out here?????She is .* What little God he managed to derive from existence. It is in this aspect that the Cobb seems most a last bulwark??against all that wild eroding coast to the west. one with the unslum-bering stars and understanding all. I exaggerate? Perhaps. it was empty; and very soon he had forgotten her. Mr. His skin was suitably pale.

down the aisle of hothouse plants to the door back to the drawing room.?? the doctor pointed into the shadows behind Charles . a woman most patently dangerous??not consciously so. Charles did not put it so crudely to himself; but he was not quite blind to his inconsistency. person returns; what then???But again Sarah did the best possible thing: she said nothing. But no doubt he told her he was one of our unfortunate coreligionists in that misguided country. sir. But I think on reflection he will recall that in my case it was a titled ape. with her pretty arms folded. When he turned he saw the blue sea. the blue shadows of the unknown. as if able to see more and suffer more. He knew. Doctor Grogan was not financially very dependent on Mrs.. when Charles came out of Mrs.????But I can guess who it is. And I will not have that heart broken.

to work from half past six to eleven. with a shuddering care. ??She must be of irreproachable moral character. Poulteney??s large Regency house. looked round him.??Then let us hear no more of this foolishness. She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument. fictionalize it. of course??it being Lent??a secular concert.????In such brutal circumstance?????Worse. I too saw them talking together yesterday. He sensed that Mrs. It was de haut en bos one moment. born in a gin palace??????Next door to one. and Charles now saw a scientific as well as a humanitarian reason in his adventure. I saw he was insincere . Charles saw she was faintly shocked once or twice; that Aunt Tranter was not; and he felt nostalgia for this more open culture of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port.

Charles killed concern with compliment; but if Sarah was not mentioned. Again she faced the sea. went to a bookshelf at the back of the narrow room. ??The Early Cretaceous is a period. but women were chained to their role at that time. since she had found that it was only thus that she could stop the hand trying to feel its way round her waist. but a little lacking in her usual vivacity. She was afraid of the dark. ??His name was Varguennes. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. indeed. Fursey-Harris??s word for that. 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. an added sweet.??I have decided. when no doubt she would be recovered?Charles??s solicitous inquiries??should the doctor not be called???being politely answered in the negative. and disapproving frowns from a sad majority of educated women. almost running.

????It seemed to me that it gave me strength and courage . Fiction is woven into all.Your predicament. on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity.?? a bow-fronted second-floor study that looked out over the small bay between the Cobb Gate and the Cobb itself; a room.?? According to Ernestina. exquisitely clear. To Mrs. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change. An hour passed. Mrs.Our broader-minded three had come early.. the cool gray eyes. I don??t give a fig for birth. an irrelevant fact that had petrified gradually over the years into the assumption of a direct lineal descent from the great Sir Francis. no right to say.Back in his rooms at the White Lion after lunch Charles stared at his face in the mirror.

since many a nineteenth-century lady??and less. She was charming when she blushed.??You have distressed me deeply. Let me finish. your prospect would have been harmonious. The author was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the leading marine biologist of his day; yet his fear of Lyell and his followers drove him in 1857 to advance a theory in which the anomalies between science and the Biblical account of Creation are all neatly removed at one fine blow: Gosse??s ingenious argument being that on the day God created Adam he also created all fossil and extinct forms of life along with him??which must surely rank as the most incomprehensible cover-up operation ever attributed to divinity by man. to catch her eye in the mirror??was a sexual thought: an imagining. and it is no doubt symptomatic that the one subject that had cost her agonies to master was mathematics. is not meant for two people. Cream. below him. madam.. ??I understand. steeped in azure. I flatter myself . he saw only a shy and wide-eyed sympathy. Talbot tried to extract the woman??s reasons.

a pink bloom. Not all is lost to expedience.There were. Sarah took upon herself much of the special care of the chlorotic girl needed. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. She had only a candle??s light to see by. no mask; and above all. But Ernest-ina had reprimanded her nurse-aunt for boring Charles with dull tittle-tattle. when he finally walked home in the small hours of the morning??was one of exalted superiority.??It was a little south-facing dell. He felt sure that he would not meet her if he kept well clear of it. but there seemed to Charles something rather infra dig. still attest. That there are not spirits generous enough to understand what I have suffered and why I suffer . But it is sufficient to say that among the more respectable townsfolk one had only to speak of a boy or a girl as ??one of the Ware Commons kind?? to tar them for life. but obsession with his own ancestry. And if you smile like that. now washing far below; and the whole extent of Lyme Bay reaching round.

as you so frequently asseverate. Mr. Dessay we??ll meet tomorrow mornin??. notebooks. But that??s neither here nor the other place. sailed-towards islands.??Miss Woodruff!?? He raised his hat. What happened was this. were known as ??swells??; but the new young prosperous artisans and would-be superior domestics like Sam had gone into competition sarto-rially. with the grim sense of duty of a bulldog about to sink its teeth into a burglar??s ankles.These ??foreigners?? were. Charles felt a great desire to reach out and take her shoul-ders and shake her; tragedy is all very well on the stage.??Charles bowed. What man is not? But he had had years of very free bachelorhood. Such an effect was in no way intended. which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. Charles set out to catch up. ????Oh! Claud??the pain!?? ??Oh!Gertrude.

????That does not excuse her in my eyes. She knew.One of the great characters of Lyme. Blind. like most men of his time. and his conventional side triumphed. A pleasantly insistent tinkle filtered up from the basement kitchen; and soon afterwards. were known as ??swells??; but the new young prosperous artisans and would-be superior domestics like Sam had gone into competition sarto-rially. you now threaten me with a scandal. they fester.????Then you should know better than to talk of a great man as ??this fellow. and ray false love will weep. If for no other reason. stains. . He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned. Of course he had duty to back him up; husbands were expected to do such things. with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman.

found that it had not been so. Charles felt a great desire to reach out and take her shoul-ders and shake her; tragedy is all very well on the stage. It was as if after each sight of it. able to reason clearly. It was a bitterly cold night. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. the etiolated descendants of Beau Brummel.????It is beyond my powers??the powers of far wiser men than myself??to help you here. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself. your feet are on the Rock.??What you call my obstinacy is my only succor. or at least that part of it that concerned the itinerary of her walks.Yet this time he did not even debate whether he should tell Ernestina; he knew he would not. kind lady knew only the other. as a stranger to you and your circumstances. since he had a fine collection of all the wrong ones. There were two very simple reasons. the difference in worth.

Poulteney found herself in a really intolerable dilemma. they cannot think that. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. ??I did not ask you to tell me these things. when she was before him. which was not too diffi-cult. she would have had the girl back at the first. He watched closely to see if the girl would in any way betray their two meetings of the day before. in short.??I know a secluded place nearby. But he could not return along the shore. while Charles knew very well that his was also partly a companion??his Sancho Panza. but he abhorred the unspeakability of the hunters. not one native type bears the specific anningii. should have found Mary so understand-ing is a mystery no lover will need explaining. It is true Sarah went less often to the woods than she had become accustomed to. which was considered by Mrs. She went up to him.

and it was only then that he realized whom he had intruded upon. who lived some miles behind Lyme. ??Will you come to see me??when dear Tina has gone??? For a second then. Poulteney??s face a fortnight before. was really a fragment of Augustan humanity; his sense of prog-ress depended too closely on an ordered society??order being whatever allowed him to be exactly as he always had been. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be. Though direct. on principle. her way of indicating that a subject had been pronounced on by her. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up. moving on a few paces. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. in spite of that. and similar mouthwatering op-portunities for twists of the social dagger depended on a sup-ply of ??important?? visitors like Charles.??The little doctor eyed him sideways. Poulteney.. Secondly. Poulteney dosed herself with laudanum every night. her face turned away. He says of one.?? And then he turned and walked away. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set and ended up.????And just now when I seemed . and he kissed her on the lips. you??d do. neat civilization behind his back. grooms.

??????Tis all talk in this ol?? place. or even yourself. by far the prettiest. sir. I think that is very far from true. For a day she had been undecided; then she had gone to see Mrs.??Charles looked at her back in dismay. I was unsuccessful. They could not conceal an intelligence.Her eyes were suddenly on his.??Is something wrong. Poulteney??s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. who had refused offers of work from less sternly Christiansouls than Mrs.??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head. Fairley.????That is very wicked of you. he tacitly took over the role of host from the younger man. but Ernestina turned to present Charles.??I have decided.??It??s that there kitchen-girl??s at Mrs.????Is that what made you laugh?????Yes. but also artificially. she startled Mrs.?? The arrangement had initially been that Miss Sarah should have one afternoon a week free. and say ??Was it dreadful? Can you forgive me? Do you hate me???; and when he smiled she would throw herself into his arms. It was plain their intention had been to turn up the path on which he stood. ??I should become what some already call me in Lyme. And I do not mean he had taken the wrong path. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world.

But the only music from the deep that night was the murmur of the tide on the shingle; and somewhere much farther out. a rich grazier??but that is nothing. then spoke. Charles adamantly refused to hunt the fox.????Mr. by the mid-century.????Interest yourself further in my circumstances. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. And I have a long nose for bigots . it was unlikely that there would be enough men to go round. but both lost and lured he felt.??The doctor quizzed him. lama. sabachthane me; and as she read the words she faltered and was silent. attempts to recollect that face.Dr. Such an effect was in no way intended. But the far clouds reminded him of his own dissatisfaction; of how he would have liked to be sailing once again through the Tyrrhenian; or riding. He came to his sense of what was proper. They had begun by discussing their respective posts; the merits and defects of Mr.????My dear uncle. Poulteney stood suddenly in the door. of course.??It was higgerance. Then silence. miss. ??I think her name is Woodruff.????And what are the others?????The fishermen have a gross name for her.?? cries back Paddy.