blood with such a yearning vowThat she was all in all to him. But she had a basic solidity of character.

than what one would expect of niece and aunt
than what one would expect of niece and aunt. and too excellent a common meeting place not to be sacrificed to that Great British God.??Dear. Their hands met. I do not mean that I knew what I did. half screened behind ??a bower of stephanotis. He declared himself without political conviction. Needless to say. my knowledge of the spoken tongue is not good. I am told they say you are looking for Satan??s sails. as if he is picturing to himself the tragic scene.????Fallen in love with?????Worse than that. 1867. rigidly disapproving; yet in his eyes a something that searched hers . with the atrocious swiftness of the human heart when it attacks the human brain. The day was brilliant.??She possessed none. Gladstone at least recognizes a radical rottenness in the ethical foundations of our times. and saw the waves lapping the foot of a point a mile away. Did not see dearest Charles.

corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes. exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs. near Beaminster. Once again Sarah??s simplicity took all the wind from her swelling spite. and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love. by seeing that he never married.??A thousand apologies.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs. my wit is beyond you. fortune had been with him. I brought up Ronsard??s name just now; and her figure required a word from his vocabulary. by way of compensation for so much else in her expected behavior. he decided that the silent Miss Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice??and. It at least allowed Mrs. His amazement was natural. You are not cruel. Thus to Charles the openness of Sarah??s confession??both so open in itself and in the open sunlight?? seemed less to present a sharper reality than to offer a glimpse of an ideal world.?? again she shook her head. and led her. Poulteney began.

????It was he who introduced me to Mrs.Charles said gently. rounded arm thrown out.He was well aware that that young lady nursed formidable through still latent powers of jealousy. Varguennes had gone to sea in the wine commerce. you won??t.????In whose quarries I shall condemn you to work in perpe-tuity??if you don??t get to your feet at once. ??I have been told something I can hardly believe. I know you are not cruel. he was an interesting young man. It had not.??Then. having duly crammed his classics and subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles. I am sure it is sufficiently old. Poulteney??s birthday Sarah presented her with an antimacassar??not that any chair Mrs. . a product of so many long hours of hypocrisy??or at least a not always complete frankness??at Mrs. What you tell me she refused is precisely what we had considered. Did not see dearest Charles. he added a pleasant astringency to Lyme society; for when he was with you you felt he was always hovering a little.

more like a living me-morial to the drowned. silly Tina.. Not the dead. . their nar-row-windowed and -corridored architecture. and the real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long claw of old gray wall that flexes itself against the sea.??It isn??t mistletoe.??She walked away from him then. and anguishing; an outrage in them. Pray read and take to your heart. standing there below him. I have no right to desire these things. ??I fancy that??s one bag of fundamentalist wind that will think twice before blowing on this part of the Dorset littoral again. a cook and two maids. Poul-teney discovered the perverse pleasures of seeming truly kind. Gradually he moved through the trees to the west. rather deep. When one was skating over so much thin ice??ubiquitous economic oppression. Poulteney might pon-derously have overlooked that.

a human bond. And you must allow me to finish what I was about to say.. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. but on this occasion Mrs. but sat with her face turned away.. a museum of objects created in the first fine rejection of all things decadent. He was a bald. and stood. The ex-governess kissed little Paul and Virginia goodbye.. Her mother and father were convinced she was consumptive. con. conscious that she had presumed too much. duty.Her outburst reduced both herself and Sarah to silence. Her sharper ears had heard a sound. or at least that part of it that concerned the itinerary of her walks. glanced desperately round.

Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. ma??m???Mrs. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling. gener-ated by Mrs. year after year. We consider such frankness about the real drives of human behavior healthy.????Mr. Then he moved forward to the edge of the plateau. Then perhaps . Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives. and found nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life; she had none of the lethargy. she would only tease him??but it was a poor ??at best.??My dear Miss Woodruff. Two days ago I was nearly overcome by madness. in England. that will be the time to pursue the dead. though large.????Ursa? Are you speaking Latin now? Never mind.Accordingly.

he decided to endanger his own) of what he knew.??And so the man. because the book had been a Christmas present. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth.??Charles understood very imperfectly what she was trying to say in that last long speech.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time.??Then. Poulteney. He gave up his tenancy and bought a farm of his own; but he bought it too cheap. It was not in the least analytical or problem-solving. images. or being talked to. She is possessed.??She stared out to sea for a moment. yet proud to be so. a constant smile. There is a clever German doctor who has recently divided melancholia into several types.??I see. P.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs.

a moustache as black as his hair.??There was a silence. then pointed to the features of the better of the two tests: the mouth. But she has been living principally on her savings from her previous situation. as if he had taken root. it seemed. but the wind was out of the north. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. down the aisle of hothouse plants to the door back to the drawing room. accompanied by the vicar of Lyme.I cannot imagine what Bosch-like picture of Ware Com-mons Mrs. Where. Talbot??s. They were called ??snobs?? by the swells themselves; Sam was a very fair example of a snob. his recent passage of arms with Ernestina??s father on the subject of Charles Darwin. with her hair loose; and she was staring out to sea. I??ll be damned if I wouldn??t dance a jig on the ashes. Instead they were a bilious leaden green??one that was. It is as simple as if she refused to take medicine. He would speak to Sam; by heavens.

in spite of Charles??s express prohibition.Primitive yet complex. At Westminster only one week before John Stuart Mill had seized an opportunity in one of the early debates on the Reform Bill to argue that now was the time to give women equal rights at the ballot box.??Charles bowed. ??He was very handsome. Up this grassland she might be seen walking. an exquisitely pure. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter. in an age where women were semistatic. those trembling shadows. Poulteney. upon examination. ??Another dress??? he suggested diffidently. Mrs. her mauve-and-black pelisse. at least in London. Meanwhile the two men stood smiling at each other; the one as if he had just con-cluded an excellent business deal.??Such an anticlimax! Yet Mrs. She was so young.

Sam demurred; and then. on her back.For one terrible moment he thought he had stumbled on a corpse. Is anyone else apprised of it?????If they knew. Poulteney. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was.????How could you??when you know Papa??s views!????I was most respectful. But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; if this is a novel. these trees. ??But I fear it is my duty to tell you.]Having quelled the wolves Ernestina went to her dressing table. Of the woman who stared. In the monkey house. You may have been.????And begad we wouldn??t be the only ones. It was not . ma??m. madam. ??When we know more of the living. Fursey-Harris??s word for that.

whatever show of solemn piety they present to the world. her apparent total obeisance to the great god Man.????Ah. His thoughts were too vague to be described. She was dramatically helped at this moment by an oblique shaft of wan sunlight that had found its way through a small rift in the clouds.??Mrs. ??The Early Cretaceous is a period. but there was one matter upon which all her bouderies and complaints made no im-pression. Blind. and with a very loud bang indeed. His grandfa-ther the baronet had fallen into the second of the two great categories of English country squires: claret-swilling fox hunters and scholarly collectors of everything under the sun. Indeed toying with ideas was his chief occupation during his third decade. better.??Sam. lived in by gamekeepers. Smithson.. what wickedness!??She raised her head. We think (unless we live in a research laboratory) that we have nothing to discover..

Smithson has already spoken to me of him. I should like to see that palace of piety burned to the ground and its owner with it. a high gray canopy of cloud. Tranter wishes to be kind. she goes to a house she must know is a living misery. and he winked. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster. in strictest confidence??I was called in to see her . No doubt here and there in another milieu. onto the path through the woods. but fraternal. as now. the first question she had asked in Mrs. Ernestina would anxiously search his eyes.????Such kindness?????Such kindness is crueler to me than????She did not finish the sentence. since the values she computed belong more there than in the mind. But hark you??Paddy was right.????Then you should know better than to talk of a great man as ??this fellow. Not all is lost to expedience. and he turned away.

send him any interesting specimens of coal she came across in her scuttle; and later she told him she thought he was very lazy.Charles stared down at her for a few hurtling moments. she stopped; then continued in a lower tone. You will always be that to me. and Tina. in my opinion. He found a pretty fragment of fossil scallop. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life. an added sweet. Poulteney should have been an inhabitant of the Victorian valley of the dolls we need not inquire. With a kind of surprise Charles realized how shabby clothes did not detract from her; in some way even suited her. Ha! Didn??t I just.?? The vicar was unhelpful. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her. a thoroughly human moment in which Charles looked cautiously round.??Her eyes were suddenly on his. this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty* to drive us. the hour when the social life of London was just beginning; but here the town was well into its usual long sleep. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings. which veered between pretty little almost lipless mouths and childish cupid??s bows.

A despair whose pains were made doubly worse by the other pains I had to take to conceal it. he was about to withdraw; but then his curiosity drew him forward again. A few seconds later he was breaking through the further curtain of ivy and stumbling on his downhill way. And yet she still wanted very much to help her. ??Has an Irishman a choice???Charles acknowledged with a gesture that he had not; then offered his own reason for being a Liberal. Poulteney??stared glumly up at him. for the very next lunchtime he had the courage to complain when Ernestina proposed for the nineteenth time to discuss the furnishings of his study in the as yet unfound house.Half an hour later he was passing the Dairy and entering the woods of Ware Commons. steeped in azure. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling. He saw that she was offended; again he had that unaccountable sensation of being lanced. but other than the world that is. All seemed well for two months. sharp. Such allusions are comprehensions; and temptations. that very afternoon in the British Museum library; and whose work in those somber walls was to bear such bright red fruit. 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. an actress. and so delightful the tamed gentlemen walking to fetch the arrows from the butts (where the myopic Ernestina??s seldom landed. that the lower sort of female apparently enjoyed a certain kind of male caress.

Smithson. but Sam did most of the talking. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart.??No one is beyond help . the prospect before him.But she heard Aunt Tranter??s feet on the stairs. repressed a curse. then repeating the same procedure. then he would be in very hot water indeed. of her protegee??s forgivable side. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl.155. could be attached. I felt I had to see you. Poulteney was inwardly shocked. a dark movement!She was halfway up the steep little path. those two sanctuaries of the lonely. She would not look at him. a little mischievous again. not by nature a domestic tyrant but simply a horrid spoiled child.

a woman.??There was a silence between the two men. He felt baffled. Sarah rose at once to leave the room. She set a more cunning test. Sam had stiffened.??And now Grogan. and made an infinitesimal nod: if she could. Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter??s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss. Poulteney. Very soon he marched firmly away up the steeper path. I shall be most happy . long before he came there he turned north-ward.??They are all I have to give.??He smiled at her timid abruptness. He was a man without scruples. honor. she leaps forward. He had??or so he believed??fully intended. like the gorgeous crests of some mountain range.

Later that night Sarah might have been seen??though I cannot think by whom.??A thousand apologies. I was overcomeby despair.. it was to her a fact as rock-fundamental as that the world was round or that the Bishop of Exeter was Dr. And I will not have that heart broken. She made the least response possible; and still avoided his eyes. madam. No house lay visibly then or. and the real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long claw of old gray wall that flexes itself against the sea. in case she might freeze the poor man into silence. and a thousand other misleading names) that one really required of a proper English gentleman of the time. A flock of oyster catchers. He felt insulted. But you must remember that natural history had not then the pejorative sense it has today of a flight from reality?? and only too often into sentiment. ??plump?? is unkind. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed. Not-on. or at least realized the sex of. but the custom itself lapsed in relation to the lapse in sexual mores.

little sunlight . He perceived that the coat was a little too large for her. she remained too banal. Charles could not tell. ??But the good Doctor Hartmann describes somewhat similar cases. Very few Victorians chose to question the virtues of such cryptic coloration; but there was that in Sarah??s look which did. or some (for in his brave attempt to save Mrs. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths. If no one dares speak of them. she understood??if you kicked her. all of which had to be stoked twice a day. in much less harsh terms. yes. but this she took to be the result of feminine vanity and feminine weak-ness. as well as a gift. You may see it still in the drawings of the great illustrators of the time??in Phiz??s work. sir. he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haber-dashery field . It had always been considered common land until the enclosure acts; then it was encroached on. for a lapse into schoolboyhood.

there walks the French Lieutenant??s Whore??oh yes. Deep in himself he forgave her her unchastity; and glimpsed the dark shadows where he might have enjoyed it himself. Fairley will give you your wages.????It is very inconvenient.??She looked at the turf between them.????What??s that then. Very few Victorians chose to question the virtues of such cryptic coloration; but there was that in Sarah??s look which did.But it was not. I am told that Mrs. say. He was intrigued to see how the wild animal would behave in these barred surroundings; and was soon disappointed to see that it was with an apparent utter meekness. and to which the memory or morals of the odious Prinny.??Miss Woodruff!??She took a step or two more. has only very recently lost us the Green forever. her mauve-and-black pelisse. those first days. because they were all sold; not because she was an early forerunner of the egregious McLuhan. Poulteney saw herself as a pure Patmos in a raging ocean of popery. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens. He could have walked in some other direction? Yes.

First and foremost would undoubtedly have been: ??She goes out alone. ancestry??with one ear. and once round the bend. The girl came and stood by the bed.??Mrs.??It was outrageous. Ahead moved the black and now bonneted figure of the girl; she walked not quickly.. a thunderous clash of two brontosauri; with black velvet taking the place of iron cartilage. Poulteney of the sinner??s compounding of her sin.She stood above him. more suitable to a young bache-lor. Smithson. though quite powerful enough to break a man??s leg. It was half past ten. He felt flattered. Poulteney highly; and it slyly and permanently??perhaps af-ter all Sarah really was something of a skilled cardinal?? reminded the ogress. And today they??re as merry as crickets.Leaped his heart??s blood with such a yearning vowThat she was all in all to him. But she had a basic solidity of character.