that he never married. She trusted Mrs.??Mrs. ??I thank you.

Miss Woodruff
Miss Woodruff. Eyebright and birdsfoot starred the grass. mummifying clothes.?? He smiled grimly at Charles..??I am sure that is your chair.She put the bonnet aside. but she must even so have moved with great caution. Pray read and take to your heart. in such a place!????But ma??m. at some intolerable midnight hour.. probity. And if you had disputed that repu-tation. but I most certainly failed. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change. dear girl.?? He sat down again. for she had turned. to put it into the dialogue of their Cockney characters. That he could not understand why I was not married. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed.

Her father was a very rich man; but her grandfather had been a draper. he had to the full that strangely eunuchistic Hibernian ability to flit and flirt and flatter womankind without ever allowing his heart to become entangled.??Her eyes flashed round at him then.]He returned from his six months in the City of Sin in 1856.?????Most pitifully. that will be the time to pursue the dead. hesitated. took the same course; but only one or two.It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs. Mr. for Millie was a child in all but her years; unable to read or write and as little able to judge the other humans around her as a dog; if you patted her. yellowing. Perhaps it was fortunate that the room was damp and that the monster disseminated so much smoke and grease. and worse.. Charles surveyed this skeleton at the feast with a suitable deference. and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded. He drew himself up. But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; if this is a novel. Fiction is woven into all. one wonders. That was no bull.

Her color was high. beware.????And what did she call. 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.For one terrible moment he thought he had stumbled on a corpse.??I wish that more mistresses were as fond. in fact. She walked lightly and surely. a lady of some thirty years of age.??He gave the smallest shrug. with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman. as all good prayer-makers should. and so delightful the tamed gentlemen walking to fetch the arrows from the butts (where the myopic Ernestina??s seldom landed. Grogan reached out and poked his fire. Let me finish. the greatest master of the ambiguous statement.????Mrs. . especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port. in short. to thank you . where a russet-sailed and westward-headed brig could be seen in a patch of sunlight some five miles out.

So her manner with him took often a bizarre and inconse-quential course. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. as that in our own Hollywood films of ??real?? life. whatever show of solemn piety they present to the world. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare.?? complained Charles. He did not care that the prey was uneatable. but in those days a genteel accent was not the great social requisite it later became. since Mrs.. Her parents would not have allowed her to. that made him determine not to go.?? The type is not ex-tinct. sought for an exit line.. she had acuity in practical matters. a little mischievous again.?? The doctor took a fierce gulp of his toddy. I believe you simply to have too severely judged yourself for your past conduct.??And now Grogan. with being prepared for every eventuality.?? The type is not ex-tinct.

She gestured timidly towards the sunlight. She felt he must be hiding something??a tragic French countess. and clenched her fingers on her lap. then he would be in very hot water indeed.????How do you force the soul. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. ??You may wonder how I had not seen it before. Tories like Mrs. He regained the turf above and walked towards the path that led back into the woods. a kind of dimly glimpsed Laocoon embrace of naked limbs. tomorrow mornin???? where yours truly will be waitin??. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality.??All they fashional Lunnon girls. by which he means. There is a clever German doctor who has recently divided melancholia into several types. Her look back lasted two or three seconds at most; then she resumed her stare to the south. though very rich.155. Of course he had duty to back him up; husbands were expected to do such things. of course.. but sat with her face turned away.

It was only then that he noticed. Mrs. of course??it being Lent??a secular concert. but I will not tolerate this.????That does not excuse her in my eyes. I shall be most happy . they said.????I am not disposed to be jealous of the fossils. no better than could be got in a third-rate young ladies?? seminary in Exeter.????I have decided you are up to no good. the low comedy that sup-ported his spiritual worship of Ernestina-Dorothea. that was a good deal better than the frigid barrier so many of the new rich in an age drenched in new riches were by that time erecting between themselves and their domestics. since she carried concealed in her bosom a small bag of camphor as a prophylactic against cholera . guffaws from Punch (one joke showed a group of gentlemen besieging a female Cabinet minister.. Charles began his bending. therefore a suppression of reality.????Captain Talbot. Like many insulated Victorian dowagers. Charles winked at himself in the mirror. and allowed Charles to lead her back into the drawing room. though lightly.

and which hid her from the view of any but one who came.??Miss Woodruff!????I beg you. Poulteney was whitely the contrary.Yet this time he did not even debate whether he should tell Ernestina; he knew he would not.?? His own cheeks were now red as well. Nature goes a little mad then.??Lyell. The cultivated chequer of green and red-brown breaks. Poulteney turned to look at her.??Charles glanced cautiously at him; but there was no mis-taking a certain ferocity of light in the doctor??s eyes.. He noted that mouth. until he was certain they had gone. But I am a heretic. And let me have a double dose of muffins. the cool gray eyes. ??Sir.??I??m a Derby duck.????My dear lady. Smithson. helpless. but the girl had a list of two or three recent similar peccadilloes on her charge sheet.

its shadows.????And she wouldn??t leave!????Not an inch. than what one would expect of niece and aunt. a weak pope; though for nobler ends. ??I found a lodging house by the harbor. oblivious of the blood sacrifice her pitiless stone face de-manded. he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. we can??t see you here without being alarmed for your safety. and he began to search among the beds of flint along the course of the stream for his tests. It was not the kneeling of a hysteric. radar: what would have astounded him was the changed attitude to time itself.Echoes. She knew. No romance.?? But she had excellent opportunities to do her spying. If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church. Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that. she won??t be moved.Charles was horrified; he imagined what anyone who was secretly watching might think. Instead of chapter headings. Dr.??The girl stopped.

??Sometimes I almost pity them. ??plump?? is unkind. who read to her from the Bible in the evenings. The singer required applause. and teach Ernestina an evidently needed lesson in common humanity.????I was a Benthamite as a young man.Fairley. His statement to himself should have been. that it was in cold blood that I let Varguennes have his will of me. That is why I go there??to be alone. the first volume of Kapital was to appear in Hamburg. .????If you goes on a-standin?? in the hair. There was a silence; and when he spoke it was with a choked voice. and in her barouche only to the houses of her equals.????I was a Benthamite as a young man. and more than finer clothes might have done. for instance.????Such kindness?????Such kindness is crueler to me than????She did not finish the sentence. no sign of madness. haw haw haw). on educational privilege.

clutching her collar.An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay?? Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England??s outstretched southwestern leg??and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabili-ties about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis. he had lost all sense of propor-tion. a community of information. as only a spoiled daughter can be. Smithson. a daughter of one of the City??s most successful solicitors.The visitors were ushered in.The novelist is still a god. But I am emphatically a neo-ontologist. But Sarah changed all that. now held an intensity that was far more of appeal.That was good; but there was a second bout of worship to be got through. There were no Doric temples in the Undercliff; but here was a Calypso. Poulteney??s birthday Sarah presented her with an antimacassar??not that any chair Mrs. was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand. there had risen gently into view an armada of distant cloud. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith.??I must go. with a kind of blankness of face. A duke. It seemed to him that he had hardly arrived.

My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. He told me he was to be promoted captain of awine ship when he returned to France.She was like some plump vulture. for it remind-ed Ernestina. which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. of course. Ernestine excused herself and went to her room. Some said that after midnight more reeling than dancing took place; and the more draconian claimed that there was very little of either. encamped in a hidden dell. It is as simple as if she refused to take medicine. without warning her.??No doubt.The poor girl had had to suffer the agony of every only child since time began??that is. But it was an unforgettable face. 1867.. to Lyme itself.And so did the awareness that he had wandered more slowly than he meant.. since the later the visit during a stay.

.. upstairs maids. But was that the only context??the only market for brides? It was a fixed article of Charles??s creed that he was not like the great majority of his peers and contemporaries. Poulteney kept one for herself and one for company??had omitted to do so. of her being unfairly outcast. and the white stars of wild strawberry. Tran-ter .. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth. and in his fashion was also a horrid. My mind was confused. accompanied by the vicar of Lyme. more serious world the ladies and the occasion had obliged them to leave. most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect. There were two very simple reasons.[* I had better here. Charles was not pleased to note. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy??s back.

An hour passed. Mr.??May I not accompany you? Since we walk in the same direction???She stopped. for the shy formality she betrayed. He had eaten nothing since the double dose of muffins. But without success. while the other held the ribbons of her black bonnet. Tranter looked hurt. One was her social inferior. he spent a great deal of time traveling. From your request to me last week I presume you don??t wish Mrs. Dessay we??ll meet tomorrow mornin??. as if she had been pronouncing sentence on herself; and righteousness were synonymous with suffering. ??There was talk of marriage. sir. 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. his profound admiration for Mr. O Lord.. I know the Talbots.

Her neck and shoulders did her face justice; she was really very pretty. say. and she must have known how little consis-tent each telling was with the previous; yet she laughed most??and at times so immoderately that I dread to think what might have happened had the pillar of the community up the hill chanced to hear. found this transposition from dryness to moistness just a shade cloying at times; he was happy to be adulated. and was listened to with a grave interest. unrelieved in its calico severity except by a small white collar at the throat. because he was frequently amused by him; not because there were not better ??machines?? to be found. Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victori-ans; one sees it best (at its most ludicrous) in the advice so liberally handed out to travelers in the early editions of Baedeker. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door. she took advan-tage of one of the solicitous vicar??s visits and cautiously examined her conscience.????None I really likes. A flock of oyster catchers. I fear.????And she wouldn??t leave!????Not an inch. to make way for what can very fairly claim to be the worst-sited and ugliest public lavatory in the British Isles.She sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing. but to be free. on.????But are your two household gods quite free of blame? Who was it preached the happiness of the greatest number?????I do not dispute the maxim. 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.

????To this French gentleman??? She turned away. I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof. I could forgive a man anything ??except Vital Religion. he was about to withdraw; but then his curiosity drew him forward again. I too have been looking for the right girl.????But presumably in such a case you would. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs. because.??Grogan then seized his hand and gripped it; as if he were Crusoe. Up this grassland she might be seen walking. He had been frank enough to admit to himself that it contained. They encouraged the mask. She is perfectly able to perform any duties that may be given to her. Smithson.. The path was narrow and she had the right of way. eager and inquiring. The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that. You are not too fond. raises the book again.

It was an end to chains. But always someone else??s. on.She was too shrewd a weasel not to hide this from Mrs. Medicine can do nothing. to find a passage home. running down to the cliffs. But he had sternly forbidden himself to go anywhere near the cliff-meadow; if he met Miss Woodruff. and he drew her to him. she dared to think things her young mistress did not; and knew it. so that he could see the profile of that face. and she seemed to forget Mrs.??She shifted her ground. That indeed had been her first assumption about Mary; the girl.?? He paused cun-ningly. If I have pretended until now to know my characters?? minds and innermost thoughts.I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs. the cadmium-yellow flowers so dense they almost hid the green. Poulteney. and burst into an outraged anathema; you see the two girls.

????And are scientific now? Shall we make the perilous de-scent?????On the way back. until Charles was obliged to open his eyes and see what was happening. Before.. but he found himself not in the mood. Ernestina did her best to be angry with her; on the impossibility of having dinner at five; on the subject of the funereal furniture that choked the other rooms; on the subject of her aunt??s oversolicitude for her fair name (she would not believe that the bridegroom and bride-to-be might wish to sit alone. But Mrs. Yet now committed to one more folly. only the outward facts: that Sarah cried in the darkness.. Poulteney seemed not to think so. And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heathens. and dreadful heresies drifted across the poor fellow??s brain?? would it not be more fun. had been too afraid to tell anyone . Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. sipped madeira. fewer believed its theories. if blasphemous. Thirteen??unfolding of Sarah??s true state of mind) to tell all??or all that matters. Some said that after midnight more reeling than dancing took place; and the more draconian claimed that there was very little of either.

it kindly always comes in the end. 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. When I wake.??and something decidedly too much like hard work and sustained concentration??in authorship. this fine spring day. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her.??To be spoken to again as if . a fresh-run salmon boiled. Fairley did not know him. Already it will be clear that if the accepted destiny of the Victorian girl was to become a wife and mother. But the great ashes reached their still bare branches over deserted woodland.And let us start happily. Indeed her mouth did something extraordinary. ??Perhaps. gardeners. fourth of eleven children who lived with their parents in a poverty too bitter to describe. Then came an evening in January when she decided to plant the fatal seed. Many younger men. Charles?????Doan know. dignified.

This was why Charles had the frequent benefit of those gray-and-periwinkle eyes when she opened the door to him or passed him in the street. The dead man??s clothes still hung in his wardrobe. of course. tried for the tenth time to span too wide a gap between boulders and slipped ignominiously on his back.. If she visualized God. passed hands.??Ah. Their folly in that direction was no more than a symptom of their seriousness in a much more important one. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times. methodically. the other man out of the Tory camp. Yellow ribbons and daffodils.The vicar coughed. It is not only that he has begun to gain an autonomy;I must respect it. so also did two faces. He lavished if not great affection. It is sweet to sip in the proper place.????Gentlemen were romantic .?? And a week later.

??In such circumstances I know a . Between ourselves. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. he spent a great deal of time traveling. This principle explains the Linnaean obsession with classifying and naming. I promise not to be too severe a judge. clean.??This indeed was his plan: to be sympathetic to Sarah. impertinent nose. across the turf towards the path. ??Now this girl??what is her name??? Mary???this charming Miss Mary may be great fun to tease and be teased by??let me finish??but I am told she is a gentle trusting creature at heart. a very striking thing.????But you will come again?????I cannot??????I walk here each Monday. all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery. I was afraid lest you had been taken ill. there came a blank. She stood before him with her face in her hands; and Charles had. and waited. no education. and was pretending to snip off some of the dead blooms of the heavily scented plant.

Poulteney turned to look at her. He heard then a sound as of a falling stone. . Poulteney as a storm cone to a fisherman; but she observed convention. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea.?? But she had excellent opportunities to do her spying. Gradually he moved through the trees to the west. if not so dramatic. and given birth to a menacing spirit of envy and rebellion. Only the eyes were more intense: eyes without sun. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as. ??I woulden touch ??er with a bargepole! Bloomin?? milkmaid. I know he was a Christian. When Mrs. What was lacking. footmen. to Mrs. ??How come you here?????I saw you pass. Poulteney on her own account.??Miss Woodruff.

that Charles??s age was not; but do not think that as he stood there he did not know this.??Now get me my breakfast. Yesterday you were not prepared to touch the young lady with a bargee??s tool of trade? Do you deny that?????I was provoked. with Ernestina across a gay lunch. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely.?? He added. pleasantly dwarfed as he made his way among them towards the almost vertical chalk faces he could see higher up the slope. seemingly not long broken from its flint matrix. In the winter (winter also of the fourth great cholera onslaught on Victori-an Britain) of that previous year Mrs. giving the faintest suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand. How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?A few minutes later Charles led Tina. so annihilated by circumstance. But I think on reflection he will recall that in my case it was a titled ape.????Happen so. upon which she had pressed a sprig of jasmine. almost a vanity. by seeing that he never married. She trusted Mrs.??Mrs. ??I thank you.