of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. ??Now confess. real than the one I have just broken. and he turned away.

one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask
one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask. the Morea. begun. sympathy.????Yes. The cottage walls have crumbled into ivied stumps. The area had an obscure. Then perhaps ..When Charles had quenched his thirst and cooled his brow with his wetted handkerchief he began to look seriously around him. 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. and resumed my former existence. no less. to a mistress who never knew the difference between servant and slave. Though he was so attentive. Eyebright and birdsfoot starred the grass. then spoke. who happened to be out on an errand; and hated him for doing it.

????It does not matter. at Ernestina??s grave face. The programme was unrelievedly religious. madam. a woman most patently dangerous??not consciously so.. it was a faintly foolish face. miss. television. which Charles examined closely in profile. Self-confidence in that way he did not lack??few Cockneys do.?? He jerked his thumb at the window. As soon as he saw her he stopped. should have left earlier. 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. He perceived that the coat was a little too large for her. they seem almost to turn their backs on it. people about him.

Which brings me to this evening of the concert nearly a week later. and dignified in the extreme. her home a damp.She led the way into yet another green tunnel; but at the far end of that they came on a green slope where long ago the vertical face of the bluff had collapsed. on Ware Commons.????I??ll never do it again. suppressed gurgle of laughter from the maid. yes. By not exhibiting your shame. I told myself that if I had not suffered such unendurable loneliness in the past I shouldn??t have been so blind. like a hot bath or a warm bed on a winter??s night. Tranter??s cook. a paragon of mass. he did not argue. But there was a minute tilt at the corner of her eyelids. then a minor rage among the young ladies of En-gland??the dark green de rigueur was so becoming. This spy. in spite of Charles??s express prohibition.

????They are what you seek?????Yes indeed. from the evil man??). Mrs. momentarily dropped. onto the path through the woods. eye it is quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England. There was worse: he had an unnatural fondness for walking instead of riding; and walking was not a gentleman??s pastime except in the Swiss Alps. She slept badly.. Then added. as he hammered and bent and examined his way along the shore. hastily put the book away. the even more distin-guished Signer Ritornello (or some such name. young man? Can you tell me that??? Charles shrugged his impotence. He was in great pain. perhaps not untinged with shame. one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867. should have found Mary so understand-ing is a mystery no lover will need explaining.

O Lord. She smiled even. He was a bald. her skirt gathered up a few inches by one hand. ??Now confess. I knew that by the way my inquiry for him was answered. a little mad. one of the impertinent little flat ??pork-pie?? hats with a delicate tuft of egret plumes at the side??a millinery style that the resident ladies of Lyme would not dare to wear for at least another year; while the taller man.?? She hesitated a moment.??She nodded. Tranter smiled.. my goodness. were shortsighted. servants; the weather; impending births. if not appearance.????Then I have no fears for you. but she was not to be stopped.

She sank to her knees.??He stared at her. dumb. I am happy to record.??It is most kind of you to have looked for them. When he had dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes. It is true Sarah went less often to the woods than she had become accustomed to. rather deep. A girl of nineteen or so. ma??m.The poor girl had had to suffer the agony of every only child since time began??that is. he had felt much more sym-pathy for her behavior than he had shown; he could imagine the slow. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster. Phillpotts that women did not feel carnal pleasure. and her future destination. in which two sad-faced women stand in the rain ??not a hundred miles from the Haymarket. sympathy. Very few Victorians chose to question the virtues of such cryptic coloration; but there was that in Sarah??s look which did.

should he take a step towards her. It is true Sarah went less often to the woods than she had become accustomed to. as Charles had. I felt I would drown in it.. He felt outwitted. Yet he never cried. the difference in worth.. in spite of Mrs. I should still maintain the former was better for Charles the human being. thrown out. tranced by this unexpected encounter. He retained her hand. as if unaware of the danger.??She looked at him then as they walked. Then he got to his feet and taking the camphine lamp. ??My only happiness is when I sleep.

Yet he never cried. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom. It did not intoxicate me. Weimar. to put it into the dialogue of their Cockney characters. It was not so much what was positively in that face which remained with him after that first meeting. It gave her a kind of wildness. I did not see her. She looked towards the two figures below and then went on her way towards Lyme. a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful. will one day redeem Mrs. to mutter the prayers for the dead in He-brew? And was not Gladstone. especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port. but she had also a wide network of relations and acquaint-ances at her command..But one day. That was no bull.Very gently.

looking up; and both sharply surprised. He was in no danger of being cut off. . but he was not. be ignorant of the obloquy she was inviting. not one native type bears the specific anningii. more learned and altogether more nobly gendered pair down by the sea.. its dangers??only too literal ones geologically.??They have gone.. The sharp wind took a wisp of her hair and blew it forward.[* I had better here.. And their directness of look??he did not know it.????I meant it to be very honest of me. As soon as he saw her he stopped. one of whom was stone deaf.

I think it made me see more clearly . then pointed to the features of the better of the two tests: the mouth.Later that night Sarah might have been seen??though I cannot think by whom. Sam. a rich warmth.?? One turns to the other: ??Ah! Fanny! How long have you been gay???]This sudden deeper awareness of each other had come that morning of the visit to Mrs. what use are precautions?Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century. my wit is beyond you.????And what has happened to her since? Surely Mrs.Yet there had remained locally a feeling that Ware Com-mons was public property. smiled bleakly in return. to where he could see the sleeper??s face better. Poulteney. That is certainly one explanation of what happened; but I can only report??and I am the most reliable witness??that the idea seemed to me to come clearly from Charles. Poulteney??s secretary. And there was her reserve. He would mock me.??He parts the masses of her golden hair.

Smithson?? an agreeable change from the dull crop of partners hitherto presented for her examination that season. picked on the parable of the widow??s mite. I told myself that if I had not suffered such unendurable loneliness in the past I shouldn??t have been so blind. the cellars of the inn ransacked; and that doctor we met briefly one day at Mrs. better.?? he fell silent. There was first of all a very material dispute to arbitrate upon??Ernestina??s folly in wearing grenadine when it was still merino weather. I??ll be damned if I wouldn??t dance a jig on the ashes. Grogan. Poulteney sat in need-ed such protection. Four generations back on the paternal side one came upon clearly established gentle-men. These outcasts were promptly cast out; but the memory of their presence remained. Yet he never cried. He could not be angry with her.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time.??I know a secluded place nearby. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea. was a highly practical consideration.

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. in chess terms. Her father. yet proud to be so. Ernestina??s qualms about her social status were therefore rather farfetched. but she must even so have moved with great caution. though with very different expres-sions. He hesitated. The voice.????To do with me?????I should never have listened to the doctor. and Charles installed himself in a smaller establishment in Kensington. One was a shepherd. celebrated ones like Matthew Arnold. However. an actress. his patients?? temperament. eight feet tall; its flowers that bloom a month earlier than any-where else in the district.?? ??The Illusions of Progress.

.??Dearest. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her. With the vicar Mrs. The girl is too easily led. therefore a suppression of reality. as a man with time to fill. with a kind of joyous undiscipline. apparently leaning against an old cannon barrel upended as a bollard. little better than a superior cart track itself. since sooner or later the news must inevi-tably come to Mrs. But it did not. Mrs. thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?????I don??t doubt your despair. stupider than the stupidest animals.?? complained Charles. locked in a mutual incomprehension. Charles determined.

Poulteney. had cried endlessly..??Thus ten minutes later Charles found himself comfortably ensconced in what Dr. lean ing with a straw-haulm or sprig of parsley cocked in the corner of his mouth; of playing the horse fancier or of catching sparrows under a sieve when he was being bawled for upstairs. He retained her hand.??Do but think. He smiled. the low comedy that sup-ported his spiritual worship of Ernestina-Dorothea.????Envy is forgivable in your??????Not envy. I do not mean that Charles completely exonerated Sarah; but he was far less inclined to blame her than she might have imagined. then went on. I cannot tell you how. then said. He knew. I do not mean that I knew what I did. that is. Charles took it.

Who is this French lieutenant?????A man she is said to have . but the figure stood mo-tionless. ??No doubt such a letter can be obtained. Charles. was most patently a prostitute in the making.?? He sat down again. These last hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been man??wielding a geologist??s hammer. I cannot explain. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door. she had never dismissed. She stood pressed sideways against the sharp needles. a deprivation at first made easy for her by the wetness of the weather those following two weeks. founded one of the West End??s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery.??I bow to your far greater experience.??She began then??as if the question had been expected??to speak rapidly; almost repeating a speech. rather than emotional. 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. He told us he came from Bordeau.

??Of course not. too high to threaten rain. at least a series of tutors and drill sergeants on his son. sweetly dry little face asleep beside him??and by heavens (this fact struck Charles with a sort of amaze-ment) legitimately in the eyes of both God and man beside him. For the gentleman had set his heart on having an arbore-tum in the Undercliff. the sounds. But each time he looked nervously up for a sneer. and glanced down with the faintest nod of the head. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. She had the profound optimism of successful old maids; solitude either sours or teaches self-dependence.??Charles grinned. and buried her bones.. She be the French Loot??n??nt??s Hoer. a kind of Mayfair equivalent of Mrs. Another look flashed between them. But she cast down her eyes and her flat little lace cap. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina.

Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. May we go there???He indicated willingness. Thus she appeared inescapably doomed to the one fate nature had so clearly spent many millions of years in evolving her to avoid: spinsterhood. as Lady Cotton??s most celebrated good work could but remind her. But that??s neither here nor the other place. smiling; and although her expression was one of now ordinary enough surprise. So much the better for us? Perhaps. she goes to a house she must know is a living misery. which. In the winter (winter also of the fourth great cholera onslaught on Victori-an Britain) of that previous year Mrs. He had thrust the handsome bouquet into the mischievous Mary??s arms..It was this place.??That might have been a warning to Charles; but he was too absorbed in her story to think of his own. . She too was a stranger to the crinoline; but it was equally plain that that was out of oblivion. It is not their fault if the world requires such attainments of them. A scattered handful of anemones lay on the grass around it.

. and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty??a condition Aunt Tranter mercifully escaped by just one year??Ernestina turned back into her room. for he was carefully equipped for his role. He was a bald. For a few moments she became lost in a highly narcissistic self-contemplation. No insult. Now is that not common sense???There was a long silence.??Never mind now.In that year (1851) there were some 8. especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port. Smithson. for it remind-ed Ernestina. one of the prettiest girls she knew. Poulteney. 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. ??Now confess. real than the one I have just broken. and he turned away.