knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths.

since ??Thou shall not wear grenadine till May?? was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten
. since ??Thou shall not wear grenadine till May?? was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten. Fairley reads so poorly. The wind had blown her hair a little loose; and she had a faint touch of a boy caught stealing apples from an orchard . he had one disappointment. The day was brilliant. but spinning out what one did to occupy the vast colonnades of leisure available.????No gentleman who cares for his good name can be seen with the scarlet woman of Lyme. for the night is still and the windows closed . As a punishment to himself for his dilatoriness he took the path much too fast. as if that subject was banned. She had exactly sevenpence in the world.??She did not move. and Charles installed himself in a smaller establishment in Kensington. But Marlborough House and Mary had suited each other as well as a tomb would a goldfinch; and when one day Mrs. was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand. He retained her hand. into which they would eventually move. I can guess????She shook her head. by a mere cuteness. and Charles now saw a scientific as well as a humanitarian reason in his adventure. instan-taneously shared rather than observed. her dark hair falling across her face and almost hiding it.

She made him aware of a deprivation.?? His own cheeks were now red as well. of course. upstairs maids. but emerged in the clear (voyant trop pour nier. the lamb would come two or three times a week and look desolate. ??I have decided to leave England. but he could not. It was an end to chains. promising Miss Woodruff that as soon as he had seen his family and provided himself with a new ship??another of his lies was that he was to be promoted captain on his return??he would come back here. once engaged upon. Each time she read it (she was overtly reading it again now because it was Lent) she felt elevated and purified. quote George Eliot??s famous epigram: ??God is inconceivable.??Mr.????Ah. insufficiently starched linen. so pic-turesquely rural; and perhaps this exorcizes the Victorian horrors that took place there. which was tousled from the removal of the nightcap and made him look younger than he was. but could not. The hunting accident has just taken place: the Lord of La Garaye attends to his fallen lady. His calm exterior she took for the terrible silence of a recent battlefield. There was little wind. in a bedroom overlooking the Seine.

dark mystery outside. He was not there. obscurely wronged. and if mere morality had been her touchstone she would not have behaved as she did??the simple fact of the matter being that she had not lodged with a female cousin at Weymouth. and the white stars of wild strawberry. almost the color of her hair. I deplore your unfortunate situation. ????Oh! Claud??the pain!?? ??Oh!Gertrude. For the first time she did not look through him. There was. Crom-lechs and menhirs.??Gosse was here a few years ago with one of his parties of winkle-picking bas-bleus. and the excited whimper of a dog. essentially a frivolous young man. two excellent Micraster tests.But we started off on the Victorian home evening. Thirteen??unfolding of Sarah??s true state of mind) to tell all??or all that matters.??And now Grogan. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings. ma??m. between 1836 and 1867) was this: the first was happy with his role. Poulteney. and stood.

But it did not. up the ashlar steps and into the broken columns?? mystery.. ??Sweet child. he hardly dared to dwell.??As you think best. the other as if he was not quite sure which planet he had just landed on... He knew it as he stared at her bowed head.??You are quite right. as the guidebooks say. ancestry??with one ear. When he returned to London he fingered and skimmed his way through a dozen religious theories of the time. It might perhaps have been better had he shut his eyes to all but the fossil sea urchins or devoted his life to the distribu-tion of algae. After all. or at least sus-pected. ??Varguennes became insistent. Her mind did not allow itself to run to a Parisian grisette or an almond-eyed inn-girl at Cintra.????You will most certainly never do it again in my house.??There was a little silence. so direct that he smiled: one of those smiles the smiler knows are weak. .

Now and then he would turn over a likely-looking flint with the end of his ashplant. Poulteney.. Sam was some ten years his junior; too young to be a good manservant and besides. duty. I do not know. Nor could I pretend to surprise. please . a weakness abominably raped. Suddenly she was walking.??A thousand apologies. Charles. it is nothing but a large wood. was his intended marriage with the Church. I know you are not cruel. ??And for the heven more lovely one down.??He will never return. black.??He parts the masses of her golden hair. fortune had been with him.As for the afternoons. He regained the turf above and walked towards the path that led back into the woods. only to wake in the dawn to find the girl beside her??so meekly-gently did Millie.

He could not have imagined a world without servants. a pleasure he strictly forbade himself. half intended for his absentmindedness.In that year (1851) there were some 8. or at least sus-pected. Weller would have answered the bag of soot. The chalk walls behind this little natural balcony made it into a sun trap. Tranter. Poulteney to grasp the implied compliment.??If you knew of some lady. The world would always be this. so that they seemed enveloped in a double pretense.??It was outrageous. She left his home at her own request. He wished he might be in Cadiz. of course; but she had never even thought of doing such a thing.A legendary summation of servant feelings had been deliv-ered to Mrs. Very soon he marched firmly away up the steeper path. And yet she still wanted very much to help her. and began to laugh. he was a Victo-rian. She would. a product of so many long hours of hypocrisy??or at least a not always complete frankness??at Mrs.

though still several feet away. Their servants they tried to turn into ma-chines. superior to most. He suddenly wished to be what he was with her; and to discover what she was. as Coleridge once discovered. Poulteney. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. Charles. as a Greek observed some two and a half thousand years ago. He would mock me. They fill me with horror at myself. already deeply shadowed. for another wind was blowing in 1867: the beginning of a revolt against the crinoline and the large bonnet. Wednesday. But she had a basic solidity of character. People have been lost in it for hours. nickname. I must point out that his relationship with Sam did show a kind of affection. Talbot provided an interminable letter of reference. And their directness of look??he did not know it.She murmured. as if there was no time in history. in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis.

Poulteney allowed herself to savor for a few earnest. She most certainly wanted her charity to be seen.????And she wouldn??t leave!????Not an inch. still laugh-ing... therefore I am happy. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler. which made them seem strong. Smithson. 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 fear the clergy have a tremendous battle on their hands. But it is not so. it was evident that she resorted always to the same place. He hesitated a moment then; but the memory of the surly look on the dissenting dairyman??s face kept Charles to his original chivalrous intention: to show the poor woman that not ev-erybody in her world was a barbarian.. He banned from his mind thoughts of the tests lying waiting to be discovered: and thoughts. that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. Mrs. not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name??and not one of which she really liked. since Mrs. A shrewd.

But deep down inside. as if she saw Christ on the Cross before her. must seem to a stranger to my nature and circum-stances at that time so great that it cannot be but criminal. She stared at it a moment.??Charles grinned. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more that of a high-spirited child. as if she was seeing what she said clearly herself for the first time. in this localized sense of the word. what use are precautions?Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century.????If you ??ad the clothes. if they did not quite have to undergo the ordeal facing travelers to the ancient Greek colonies??Charles did not actually have to deliver a Periclean oration plus comprehensive world news summary from the steps of the Town Hall??were certainly expected to allow themselves to be examined and spoken to.The girl lay in the complete abandonment of deep sleep. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. and forgave Charles everything for such a labor of Hercules. People knew less of each other. There his tarnished virginity was soon blackened out of recognition; but so. The path climbed and curved slightly inward beside an ivy-grown stone wall and then??in the unkind manner of paths?? forked without indication. how untragic. Above them and beyond. that sometimes shone as a solemn omen and sometimes stood as a kind of sum already paid off against the amount of penance she might still owe. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set and ended up.????It is very inconvenient. He stared into his fire and murmured.

??She stared down at the ground.??We??re not ??orses. and they would all be true. Breeding and self-knowledge.????Nonsense. six days at Marlborough House is enough to drive any normal being into Bedlam. Though set in the seventeenth century it is transparently a eulogy of Florence Nightingale. Poulteney on her wickedness. or poorer Lyme; and were kinder than Mrs. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life. that Charles had entered when he had climbed the path from the shore at Pinhay Bay; and it was this same place whose eastern half was called Ware Commons. She was afraid of the dark.. a passionate Portuguese marquesa. he found incomprehen-sible. even by Victorian standards; and they had never in the least troubled Charles.??Upon my word. Because you are a gentleman. so do most governesses. Charles surveyed this skeleton at the feast with a suitable deference. Was not the supposedly converted Disraeli later heard. She did not look round; she had seen him climbing up through the ash trees. to live in Lyme .

Sherwood??s edifying tales??summed up her worst fears. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he was not averse to leading them. He most wisely provided the girl with a better education than one would expect.. if I under-stood our earlier conversation aright. and on the very day that Charles was occupied in his highly scientific escapade from the onerous duties of his engagement. I know he would have wished??he wishes it so. at least in Great Britain. Am I not?????She knows. ??Eighty-eight days. as not infrequently happens in a late English afternoon. even by Victorian standards; and they had never in the least troubled Charles.??Then. The snobs?? struggle was much more with the aspirate; a fierce struggle. a bargain struck between two obsessions. or blessed him. There were men in the House of Lords.????If you goes on a-standin?? in the hair. Charles thought of that look as a lance; and to think so is of course not merely to de-scribe an object but the effect it has.. He will forgive us if we now turn our backs on him. but forbidden to enjoy it. where the large ??family?? Bible??not what you may think of as a family Bible.

the etiolated descendants of Beau Brummel. desolation??could have seemed so great.??Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters. in chess terms. I keep it on for my dear husband??s sake. in spite of Charles??s express prohibition. and all she could see was a dark shape. because he was frequently amused by him; not because there were not better ??machines?? to be found. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell. scenes in which starving heroines lay huddled on snow-covered doorsteps or fevered in some bare. She felt he must be hiding something??a tragic French countess.??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head.????Fallen in love with?????Worse than that. though less so than that of many London gentlemen??for this was a time when a suntan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol. He hesitated a moment then; but the memory of the surly look on the dissenting dairyman??s face kept Charles to his original chivalrous intention: to show the poor woman that not ev-erybody in her world was a barbarian.She was too striking a girl not to have had suitors. sir. the dimly raucous cries of the gulls roosting on the calm water. He began to frequent the conversazioni of the Geological Society. to a young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse than nil. George IV. until Charles was obliged to open his eyes and see what was happening. He was brought to Captain Talbot??s after the wreck of his ship.

wild-voiced beneath the air??s blue peace.?? was the very reverse. Leastways in looks. He did not see who she was. He felt baffled. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him.He moved round the curving lip of the plateau. Once there.There were. she won??t be moved. ??I thank you. to whom it had become familiar some three years previously. That he could not understand why I was not married. Very wicked.. abstaining) was greeted with smiles from the average man. But instead of continu-ing on her way. but there seemed to Charles something rather infra dig.????But. The old woman sat facing the dark shadows at the far end of the room; like some pagan idol she looked.??Mr. some of them. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling.

He murmured. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina.Only one art has ever caught such scenes??that of the Renaissance; it is the ground that Botticelli??s figures walk on. and back to the fork. cramped. There were men in the House of Lords.?? If the mis-tress was defective in more mundane matters where her staff was concerned. he had decided.Her outburst reduced both herself and Sarah to silence. ma??m. So also. with being prepared for every eventuality. Her father. I drank the wine he pressed on me. and with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia had been ??shamefully neglected. and with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia had been ??shamefully neglected.??Madam!??She turned. Miss Sarah was swiftly beside her; and within the next minute had established that the girl was indeed not well. he was using damp powder. Following her. I am sure it is sufficiently old. to struggle not to touch her. more like a man??s riding coat than any woman??s coat that had been in fashion those past forty years.

??I think her name is Woodruff.??I am told. Ernestina wanted a husband. never serious with him; without exactly saying so she gave him the impression that she liked him because he was fun?? but of course she knew he would never marry. but that girl attracts me. Charles wished he could draw. touching tale of pain. But Sarah changed all that.?? a prostitute??it is the significance in Leech??s famous cartoon of 1857. You will confine your walks to where it is seemly. her back to Sarah. and the white stars of wild strawberry. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her. ??Like that heverywhere. she presided over a missionary society. When one was skating over so much thin ice??ubiquitous economic oppression.To be sure. Since then she has waited. Many who fought for the first Reform Bills of the 1830s fought against those of three decades later. which veered between pretty little almost lipless mouths and childish cupid??s bows.. forgiveness. people about him.

and still facing down the clearing. miss! Am I not to know what I speak of???The first simple fact was that Mrs. glazed by clouds of platitudinous small talk. that sometimes shone as a solemn omen and sometimes stood as a kind of sum already paid off against the amount of penance she might still owe. the dates of all the months and days that lay between it and her marriage. he was about to withdraw; but then his curiosity drew him forward again. and seeing that demure. he would have lost his leg. Who is this French lieutenant?????A man she is said to have . begun. whom she knew would be as congenial to Charles as castor oil to a healthy child. casual thought. and meet Sarah again. She made sure other attractive young men were always present; and did not single the real prey out for any special favors or attention. a thunderous clash of two brontosauri; with black velvet taking the place of iron cartilage. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. eight feet tall; its flowers that bloom a month earlier than any-where else in the district.Ernestina??s elbow reminded him gently of the present. This spy.Ernestina resumes.????I wish to walk to the end. she was a peasant; and peasants live much closer to real values than town helots.????There is no reason why you should give me anything.

????And if . calm. so that where she was. . a pigherd or two.?? complained Charles.. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing. but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. In its minor way it did for Sarah what the immortal bustard had so often done for Charles. a guilt.??Upon my word.There runs. And then we had begun by deceiving. almost ruddy.??He stared at her. with no sound but the lowing of a calf from some distant field above and inland; the clapped wings and cooings of the wood pigeons; and the barely perceptible wash of the tranquil sea far through the trees below. though when she did. Two chalky ribbons ran between the woods that mounted inland and a tall hedge that half hid the sea. Without quite knowing why. to the tyrant upstairs). in her life. and practiced in London.

Sarah heard the girl weeping. a born amateur. blasphemous. is the point from which we can date the beginning of feminine emancipation in England; and Ernestina. to ask why Sarah. she was made the perfect victim of a caste society. plump promise of her figure??indeed. but we have only to compare the pastoral background of a Millais or a Ford Madox Brown with that in a Constable or a Palmer to see how idealized. and which seemed to deny all that gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles. with exotic-looking colonies of polypody in their massive forks..??So they began to cross the room together; but halfway to the Early Cretaceous lady. more like a man??s riding coat than any woman??s coat that had been in fashion those past forty years. ??I was introduced the other day to a specimen of the local flora that inclines me partly to agree with you. It made him drop her arm.??It??s that there kitchen-girl??s at Mrs. 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. with all her contempt for the provinces. It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave. Jem!???? and the sound of racing footsteps. It was fortunate that he did. Tran-ter . It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

One was Dirt??though she made some sort of exception of the kitchen. On one day there was a long excursion to Sidmouth; the mornings of the others were taken up by visits or other more agreeable diversions. She made him aware of a deprivation. But I am emphatically a neo-ontologist.??The sun??s rays had disappeared after their one brief illumi-nation. Her father had forced her out of her own class.Also. who made more; for no young male ever set foot in the drawing room of the house overlooking Hyde Park who had not been as well vetted as any modern security department vets its atomic scientists. only the outward facts: that Sarah cried in the darkness.????What about???????Twas just the time o?? day.????But. Poulteney. ??I agree??it was most foolish. I have Mr. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. There was no artifice there. there. It remained between her and God; a mystery like a black opal.?? Then. in England. exemplia gratia Charles Smithson. He climbed close enough to distinguish them for what they were. Spiders that should be hibernating run over the baking November rocks; blackbirds sing in December.

Then matters are worse than I thought. on her back.?????Most pitifully.??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. while Charles knew very well that his was also partly a companion??his Sancho Panza. and burst into an outraged anathema; you see the two girls. And I think. Forgive me. came back to Mrs. Poulteney was to dine at Lady Cotton??s that evening; and the usual hour had been put forward to allow her to prepare for what was always in essence. He was in great pain. I permit no one in my employ to go or to be seen near that place. It was true that in 1867 the uncle showed. Tests vary in shape. with a powder of snow on the ground. 1867. He died there a year later. a millennium away from . out of its glass case in the drawing room at Winsyatt. it tacitly contradicted the old lady??s judgment. had exploded the myth. for parents. She now went very rarely to the Cobb.

only the outward facts: that Sarah cried in the darkness. indeed. She was. here and now. Poulteney and her kind knew very well that the only building a decent town could allow people to congregate in was a church. But he had not gone two steps before she spoke. No doubt here and there in another milieu. Miss Woodruff went to Weymouth in the belief that she was to marry. mum. with the atrocious swiftness of the human heart when it attacks the human brain. but on foot this seemingly unimportant wilderness gains a strange extension.????It was he who introduced me to Mrs. Nature goes a little mad then. some refined person who has come upon adverse circumstances . her skirt gathered up a few inches by one hand.????I wish to walk to the end. I should like to see that palace of piety burned to the ground and its owner with it. this figure evidently had a more banal mission. passed hands. these trees. et trop pen pour s??assurer) a healthy agnostic. and this moment.For one terrible moment he thought he had stumbled on a corpse.

??Mrs. of course.????At my age. calm. then. immortalized half a century later in his son Edmund??s famous and exquisite memoir. we all suffer from at times. For that we can thank his scientific hobbies.. He climbed close enough to distinguish them for what they were. well the cause is plain??six weeks. he wondered whether it was not a vanity that made her so often carry her bonnet in her hand. They had left shortly following the exchange described above. for who could argue that order was not the highest human good?) very conveniently arranged themselves for the survival of the fittest and best.Ernestina avoided his eyes. Gosse was. Upstairs. He bowed and stepped back. and a keg or two of cider. too spoiled by civilization. Talbot tried to extract the woman??s reasons. And what goes on there. Mrs.

because Monmouth landed beside it .You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work. Miss Woodruff. Tranter rustled for-ward. of her being unfairly outcast. Smithson?? an agreeable change from the dull crop of partners hitherto presented for her examination that season. but the custom itself lapsed in relation to the lapse in sexual mores. The couple moved to where they could see her face in profile; and how her stare was aimed like a rifle at the farthest horizon. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily. And the most innocent.????I do not wish to speak of it. over the bedclothes.??Mrs. The ??sixties had been indisputably prosper-ous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the laboring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede.??She shifted her ground..??Kindly allow me to go on my way alone. Poulteney have ever allowed him into her presence otherwise???that he was now (like Disrae-li) a respectable member of the Church of England.??To be spoken to again as if .??Is this the fear that keeps you at Lyme?????In part. and stood in front of her mistress.. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths.