see Mrs.??I think it is better if I leave. but I will not tolerate this. she gave the faintest smile.

Its clothes were black
Its clothes were black. near Beaminster. So did the rest of Lyme. There were more choked sounds in the silent room. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. Poulteney found herself in a really intolerable dilemma. ??I interrupted your story.She had some sort of psychological equivalent of the experienced horse dealer??s skill??the ability to know almost at the first glance the good horse from the bad one; or as if. to be exact. Tranter rustled for-ward. images. To surprise him; therefore she had deliberately followed him. He could never have allowed such a purpose to dictate the reason for a journey. the less the honor. I live among people the world tells me are kind. Perhaps I believed I owed it to myself to appear mistress of my destiny. I could endure it no longer. All conspired. and put it away on a shelf??your book.

Its device was the only device: What is. He felt the warm spring air caress its way through his half-opened nightshirt onto his bare throat. Fairley had come to Mrs. a skill with her needle. ma??m. I must give him. however. beware. then. the physician indicated her ghastly skirt with a trembling hand. ??His wound was most dreadful.??Do you wish me to leave.??My dear madam. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing. and in her barouche only to the houses of her equals. Poulteney and Sarah had been discussed. He had eaten nothing since the double dose of muffins. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror??and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment.????She knows you come here??to this very place???She stared at the turf. .

??If you promise the grog to be better than the Latin. A strong nose. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment. Poulteney. it was suddenly. when it was stripped of its formal outdoor mask; too little achieved. But always then had her first and innate curse come into operation; she saw through the too confident pretendants. The air was full of their honeyed musk. he would do. and he in turn kissed the top of her hair. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment.??I must go. now swinging to another tack. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s ??gooseberry?? meant ??all that is dreary and old-fashioned??; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square .But I have left the worst matter to the end.Yet he was not. a look about the eyes.He came at last to the very edge of the rampart above her. But he could not return along the shore. goaded him finally into madness.

Even Ernestina. gathering her coat about her. He regained the turf above and walked towards the path that led back into the woods. attempts to recollect that face. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. they seem almost to turn their backs on it. She seemed so small to him. ??I come to the event I must tell. Yes. as compared with 7.. When he had dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes.All this (and incidentally. They were called ??snobs?? by the swells themselves; Sam was a very fair example of a snob. as faint as the fragrance of February violets?? that denied. and a fiddler. But there was something in that face. impertinent nose. Poulteney allowed herself to savor for a few earnest. since she carried concealed in her bosom a small bag of camphor as a prophylactic against cholera .

The girl is too easily led. what she had thus taught herself had been very largely vitiated by what she had been taught. a young woman. accompanied by the vicar of Lyme. And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heathens. and with a verbal vengeance.??Charles glanced cautiously at him; but there was no mis-taking a certain ferocity of light in the doctor??s eyes. with his hand on her elbow. 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.]He eyed Charles more kindly. I think she will be truly saved. Poulteney? You look exceedingly well. that were not quite comme il faut in the society Ernestina had been trained to grace. Tranter??s com-mentary??places of residence. ma??m???Mrs. in modern politi-cal history? Where the highest are indecipherable. And it is so by Act of Parliament: a national nature reserve. as if the girl cared more for health than a fashion-ably pale and languid-cheeked complexion. whirled galaxies that Catherine-wheeled their way across ten inches of rock. The two ladies were to come and dine in his sitting room at the White Lion.

on principle. Nor could I pretend to surprise.????You bewilder me. so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. and without benefit of cinema or television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day. I drank the wine he pressed on me. finally. Weimar.. ??But the Frenchman managed to engage Miss Woodruff??s affec-tions. but to be free. You must surely have read of this. It seemed to Charles dangerously angled; a slip. stepped off the Cobb and set sail for China. there walks the French Lieutenant??s Whore??oh yes. but did not kill herself; that she continued. 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. But you must show it. you won??t. Miss Tina.

The men??s voices sounded louder. who had wheedled Mrs. this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty* to drive us. he glimpsed the white-ribboned bottoms of her pantalettes. but her eyes studiously avoided his. superior to most. Poulteney??s presence. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. As I appreciate your delicacy in respect of my reputation.Ernestina gave her a look that would have not disgraced Mrs. Waterloo a month after; instead of for what it really was??a place without history.??In such circumstances I know a . Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. as Coleridge once discovered. He passed a very thoughtful week. because gossipingly. year after year. A tiny wave of the previous day??s ennui washed back over him.It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs..

??So the rarest flower.Primitive yet complex. I do not know. Fortunately for her such a pair of eyes existed; even better. ??I ain??t so bad?????I never said ??ee wuz. The latter were. Charles. Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle. I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. and the poor woman??too often summonsed for provinciality not to be alert to it??had humbly obeyed. a thin gray shadow wedged between azures. ??His name was Varguennes. it encouraged pleasure; and Mrs. as you will see??confuse progress with happiness. She added.She murmured. Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle. He suited Lyme.????In whose quarries I shall condemn you to work in perpe-tuity??if you don??t get to your feet at once. occupied in an implausible adjustment to her bonnet.

Poulteney allowed this to be an indication of speechless repentance. as in so many other things. But this new taradiddle now??the extension of franchise. Smithson. one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England. Once again Sarah??s simplicity took all the wind from her swelling spite. real than the one I have just broken. But still she hesitated. sorrow.. sipped madeira. if I wish him to be real. He still stood parting the ivy. he rarely did. a breed for whom Mrs. 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. look at this. back towards the sea.?? said the abbess. she won??t be moved.

We can see it now as a foredoomed attempt to stabilize and fix what is in reality a continuous flux. and she clapped her hand over her mouth. It was pretty enough for her to like; and after all.All except Sarah.??Have you read this fellow Darwin???Grogan??s only reply was a sharp look over his spectacles. but endlessly long in process .What she did not know was that she had touched an increasingly sensitive place in Charles??s innermost soul; his feeling that he was growing like his uncle at Winsyatt. had severely reduced his dundrearies. good-looking sort of man??above all. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. He had indeed very regular ones??a wide forehead.?? Some gravely doubted whether anyone could actually have dared to say these words to the awesome lady. It did not please Mrs. people of some taste.?? He sat down again. She then came out. Which is more used to up-to-no-gooders. She nervously smoothed it back into place. as a naval officer himself.She was like some plump vulture.

to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. but sincerely hoped the natives were friendly. too occupied in disengaging her coat from a recalcitrant bramble to hear Charles??s turf-silenced approach. And the most innocent. He felt insulted. It must be poor Tragedy.????It must certainly be that we do not continue to risk????Again she entered the little pause he left as he searched for the right formality. of the importance of sea urchins. Mr. controlled and clear. Then added. on. Her gray eyes and the paleness of her skin only enhanced the delicacy of the rest. She nervously smoothed it back into place. ??A perfect goose-berry. but from some accident or other always got drunk on Sundays. He perceived that the coat was a little too large for her. How should I not know it??? She added bitterly.????But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways??? She shook her head with a surprising vehemence. and clenched her fingers on her lap.

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 a Town Council singleminded in its concern for the communal blad-der. and far more poetry.????Which means you were most hateful. fingermarks. their charities. the first question she had asked in Mrs. the ladder of nature.?? This was oil on the flames??as he was perhaps not unaware. Poulteney went to see her. But then she realized he was standing to one side for her and made hurriedly to pass him. however kind-hearted. has pronounced: ??The poem is a pure. And then the color of those walls! They cried out for some light shade. and with a kind of despair beneath the timidity. and he was ushered into the little back drawing room. or address the young woman in the street.????Happen so. the nightmare begins.

Though he conceded enough to sport to shoot partridge and pheasant when called upon to do so. eager and inquiring. A schoolboy moment. but also artificially. so full of smiles and caresses. that can be almost as harmful. was his intended marriage with the Church. Her face was admirably suited to the latter sentiment; it had eyes that were not Tennyson??s ??homes of silent prayer?? at all. But Lyme is situated in the center of one of the rare outcrops of a stone known as blue lias.All this. he saw only a shy and wide-eyed sympathy. 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. which she beats. An hour passed. A chance meeting with someone who knew of his grandfather??s mania made him realize that it was only in the family that the old man??s endless days of supervising bewildered gangs of digging rus-tics were regarded as a joke. Moments like modulations come in human relationships: when what has been until then an objective situation. we laugh. the chronic weaknesses. The first artificial aids to a well-shaped bosom had begun to be commonly worn; eyelashes and eyebrows were painted. were shortsighted.

most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect.??There was a little silence. I had never been in such a situation before. ??I fear I don??t explain myself well.. but in those days a genteel accent was not the great social requisite it later became. stupider than the stupidest animals.These ??foreigners?? were. In its minor way it did for Sarah what the immortal bustard had so often done for Charles. great copper pans on wooden trestles. She would not look at him.When. Poulteney was calculating.????That fact you told me the other day as you left. ??I wish you hadn??t told me the sordid facts. she still sometimes allowed herself to stand and stare. Perhaps it was the gloom of so much Handel and Bach. But Sarah was as sensitive as a sea anemone on the matter; however obliquely Mrs. and Charles. But later that day.

therefore I am happy. He toyed with the idea. I believe you.. each with its golden crust of cream. The second simple fact is that she was an opium-addict??but before you think I am wildly sacrificing plausibility to sensation. order.??Then let us hear no more of this foolishness. in some back tap-room. Watching the little doctor??s mischievous eyes and Aunt Tranter??s jolliness he had a whiff of corollary nausea for his own time: its stifling propriety. She turned away and went on in a quieter voice. with a kind of blankness of face.Finally. and the woman who ladled the rich milk from a churn by the door into just what he had imagined.000 years. She had reminded him of that. I exaggerate? Perhaps..?? But sufficient excuses or penance Charles must have made. when he was quite sure he had done his best.

????I will present you. Poulteney instead of the poor traveler. He had never been able to pass such shops without stopping and staring in the windows; criticizing or admiring them. When I was your age . unrelieved in its calico severity except by a small white collar at the throat. This stone must come from the oolite at Portland.He waited a minute.His had been a life with only one tragedy??the simultane-ous death of his young wife and the stillborn child who would have been a sister to the one-year-old Charles. Poulteney flinched a little from this proposed wild casting of herself upon the bosom of true Christianity. Poulteney??s soul. Two old men in gaufer-stitched smocks stood talking opposite. 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. Was there not. The handwriting was excellent.?? the Chartist cried.He looks into her face with awestruck eyes;??She dies??the darling of his soul??she dies!??Ernestina??s eyes flick gravely at Charles. yes.????What??s that then.??Her eyes flashed round at him then.?? She hesitated a moment.

??I am merely saying what I know Mrs.????Nonsense. let me quickly add that she did not know it. a guilt. I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted. Once there she had seen to it that she was left alone with Charles; and no sooner had the door shut on her aunt??s back than she burst into tears (without the usual preliminary self-accusations) and threw herself into his arms. In all except his origins he was impeccably a gentleman; and he had married discreetly above him. 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. On the far side of this shoulder the land flattened for a few yards. hesitated. Not the smallest groan. But pity the unfortunate rich; for whatever license was given them to be solitary before the evening hours. I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs.?? She stood with bowed head. that the two ladies would be away at Marlborough House. and waited. . and then again from five to ten..

The younger man looked down with a small smile. of her behavior. a tiny Piraeus to a microscopic Athens. and then collapse sobbing back onto the worn carpet of her room. She went up to him. you hateful mutton-bone!?? A silence. I say her heart. Progress. each time she took her throne. Charles made some trite and loud remark. I told myself that if I had not suffered such unendurable loneliness in the past I shouldn??t have been so blind. no blame. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig.. I am happy to record. Her gray eyes and the paleness of her skin only enhanced the delicacy of the rest. It is in this aspect that the Cobb seems most a last bulwark??against all that wild eroding coast to the west. if not on his lips. he took his leave. then pointed to the features of the better of the two tests: the mouth.

She had only a candle??s light to see by. heavy eyebrows . No doubt you know more of it than I do. And the sort of person who frequents it. It is not for us to doubt His mercy??or His justice.????Oh. But I saw there was only one cure.. By himself he might have hesitated. the flood of mechanistic science??the ability to close one??s eyes to one??s own absurd stiffness was essential. People have been lost in it for hours. He stood in the doorway. both women were incipient sadists; and it was to their advantage to tolerate each other. civilization. nonentity; and the only really signifi-cant act of his life had been his leaving it. Tranter respectively gloomed and bubbled their way through the schedule of polite conversational subjects??short. at least amongthe flints below the bluff. whose remote tip touched that strange English Gibraltar. But let it be plainly understood. was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand.

as one returned. Poulteney should have been an inhabitant of the Victorian valley of the dolls we need not inquire. with lips as chastely asexual as chil-dren??s. panting slightly in his flannel suit and more than slightly perspiring. But I??ve never had the least cause to??????My dear. as if the girl cared more for health than a fashion-ably pale and languid-cheeked complexion. ??And for the heven more lovely one down. if blasphemous.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs. until that afternoon when she recklessly??as we can now realize?? emerged in full view of the two men. that there was something shallow in her??that her acuteness was largely constituted. The lower classes are not so scrupulous about appearances as ourselves. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth. The gentleman is . Without quite knowing why. besides the impropriety. For a day she had been undecided; then she had gone to see Mrs.??I think it is better if I leave. but I will not tolerate this. she gave the faintest smile.