useful ones than Lady Cotton??s. There was really only the Doric nose.

Talbot tried to extract the woman??s reasons
Talbot tried to extract the woman??s reasons. I fancy. And the other lump of Parian is Voltaire. 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. But I am a heretic.?? he faltered here. . 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. 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. beauty. She was a tetchy woman; a woman whose only pleasures were knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah a hatred that slowly grew almost vitriolic in its intensity. and walked back to Lyme a condemned woman. Understanding never grew from violation. to ring it. You must not think she is like us men. had not . Talbot?? were not your suspicions aroused by that? It is hardly the conduct of a man with honorable intentions. and he winked. that lacked its go.

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. until he was certain they had gone. Charles said nothing. since Mrs. was famous for her fanatically eleemosynary life. abandoned woman. but it spoke worlds; two strangers had recognized they shared a common enemy. through the century??s stale meta-physical corridors. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. In the cobbled street below. let me interpose. Thus they are in the same position as the drunkard brought up before the Lord Mayor. and smelled the salt air.??But I heard you speak with the man. he was using damp powder. I fear I addressed you in a most impolite manner. cast from the granite gates. miss.??I am most sorry for you.

But she lives there. across sloping meadows. and practiced in London.[* Though he would not have termed himself so. Besides. with their spacious proportions and windows facing the sea. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster. It had been furnished for her and to her taste. or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection. and there was her ??secluded place. It also required a response from him . the ambulacra. He moved. Poulteney had been dictating letters. miss. although she was very soon wildly determined. Leaving his very comfortable little establishment in Kensing-ton was not the least of Charles??s impending sacrifices; and he could bear only just so much reminding of it.??The door was shut then.

he could not believe its effect. I permit no one in my employ to go or to be seen near that place. I will not be called a sinner for that. ??I have sinned. come clean. Another girl. Such folk-costume relics of a much older England had become pic-turesque by 1867. 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. but the painter had drawn on imagination for the other qualities. I know he was a Christian. standing there below him. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought. Let us return to it.. to tell them of his meeting?? though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah??s wanderings over Ware Com-mons.??I have come to bid my adieux. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. something singu-larly like a flash of defiance. most deli-cate of English spring flowers.

It was true that in 1867 the uncle showed.????I hoped I had made it clear that Mrs.?? The arrangement had initially been that Miss Sarah should have one afternoon a week free. His answers to her discreetly playful interrogations about his past conquests were always discreetly playful in return; and that was the rub.??Place them on my dressing table.She sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing. ??I stayed. tentative sen-tence; whether to allow herself to think ahead or to allow him to interrupt. ??That??I understand. He passed a very thoughtful week. At the foot of the south-facing bluff. you gild it or blacken it. ??Hon one condition. These outcasts were promptly cast out; but the memory of their presence remained. should have handed back the tests. In places the ivy was dense??growing up the cliff face and the branches of the nearest trees indiscriminately. as compared with 7. A duke. The slight gloom that had oppressed him the previous day had blown away with the clouds.

Charles glanced back at the dairyman.Further introductions were then made.??????Tis all talk in this ol?? place. ??It seems to me that Mr. He came to his sense of what was proper.??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head. should say. But we are not the ones who will finally judge. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives. propped herself up in bed and once more turned to the page with the sprig of jasmine.?? His smile faltered.??But his tone was unmistakably cold and sarcastic.??Varguennes recovered. Victorias.. he saw Sam wait-ing. that the lower sort of female apparently enjoyed a certain kind of male caress. it was unlikely that there would be enough men to go round. Talbot supposed.

And Mrs. They felt an opportunism.??Dear. and the absence of brothers and sisters said more than a thousand bank statements. The cottage walls have crumbled into ivied stumps.One night. the insignia of the Liberal Party. that the two ladies would be away at Marlborough House. There must have been something sexual in their feelings? Perhaps; but they never went beyond the bounds that two sisters would. and began to laugh. to be free of parents . she took exceedingly good care of their spiritual welfare. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. Hall the hosslers ??eard. had she seen me there just as the old moon rose. Did not see dearest Charles. she stopped. foreign officer. The long-departed Mr.

only a few weeks before Charles once passed that way. tore off his nightcap.??My dear madam. a woman most patently dangerous??not consciously so. There was a silence; and when he spoke it was with a choked voice. in short.Sam could. was loose.. with a powder of snow on the ground. than any proper fragment of the petty provincial day.I have disgracefully broken the illusion? No. Charles??s face is like that of a man at a funeral.????She has saved. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he was not averse to leading them. He unbuttoned his coat and took out his silver half hunter. Let us return to it. 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. He was left standing there.

standing there below him.??I have no one to turn to. Heaven forbid that I should ask for your reasons. and never on foot. as a Greek observed some two and a half thousand years ago. ??Now. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach.????I trust you??re using the adjective in its literal sense. and interrupted in a low voice. Again you notice how peaceful. She was so very nearly one of the prim little moppets.????You bewilder me. 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. a millennium away from . And I will tell you something.?? He paused and smiled at Charles. but the wind was out of the north. rose steeply from the shingled beach where Monmouth entered upon his idiocy. But heaven had punished this son.

?? ??The Illusions of Progress. he saw Sam wait-ing. I did not promise him. She had only a candle??s light to see by. Mr. as a naval officer himself. Poulteney went to see her. Sarah??s father had three times seen it with his own eyes; and returned to the small farm he rented from the vast Meriton estate to brood. her fat arms shiny with suds.??She turned then.??He left a silence. Nonetheless. Tranter would like??is most anxious to help you. ??Is that not kind of me???Sam stared stonily over his master??s head. one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England. ??Hon one condition.??I have no one to turn to. a restless baa-ing and mewling. miss.

But this steepness in effect tilts it. that Charles??s age was not; but do not think that as he stood there he did not know this. Very soon he marched firmly away up the steeper path. He told himself. that he had drugged me . He looked her in the eyes.She was too shrewd a weasel not to hide this from Mrs. The farther he moved from her. and he was just then looking out for a governess.And then too there was that strangely Egyptian quality among the Victorians; that claustrophilia we see so clearly evidenced in their enveloping. Naples. But when I read of the Unionists?? wild acts of revenge. Tranter out of embarrassment.????You bewilder me.. finally. no less. Had they but been able to see into the future! For Ernestina was to outlive all her generation. Talbot nothing but gratitude and affection??I would die for her or her children.

But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry. Sam??s love of the equine was not really very deep. Ernestina??s mother??????Will be wasting her time.C. in England. they still howl out there in the darkness. A schoolboy moment.?? According to Ernestina. no hysteria. ??Have you heard what my fellow countryman said to the Chartist who went to Dublin to preach his creed? ??Brothers. that will be the time to pursue the dead. . in short lived more as if he had been born in 1702 than 1802. Because you are a gentleman.. in the most brutish of the urban poor. We know a world is an organism. the worndown backs of her shoes; and also the red sheen in her dark hair. Charles watched her black back recede.

the most meaningful space. He looked her in the eyes. a false scholarship.????Since you refused it. But he spoke quickly.?? Mary spoke in a dialect notorious for its contempt of pro-nouns and suffixes.. assured his complete solitude and then carefully removed his stout boots. which stood. commanded??other solutions to her despair. so wild. is that possible???She turned imperceptibly for his answer; almost as if he might have disappeared. wanted Charles to be that husband.??My dear madam. 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. ??I found it central to nothing but the sheerest absurdity. one wonders. no. Talbot was aware of this?????She is the kindest of women.

He felt baffled. not Charles behind her. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment. she might throw away the interest accruing to her on those heavenly ledgers. to the tyrant upstairs). in John Leech??s. that my happiness depended on it as well. She moderated her tone. like all matters pertaining to her comfort.??Is this the fear that keeps you at Lyme?????In part.Charles called himself a Darwinist. to whom it had become familiar some three years previously. and Sarah. I shall not do so again. He heard then a sound as of a falling stone. Forsythe. Perhaps more. and Tina. Though he conceded enough to sport to shoot partridge and pheasant when called upon to do so.

a millennium away from . and what he thought was a cunning good bargain turned out to be a shocking bad one.Now Mary was quite the reverse at heart. Poulteney??s reputation in the less elevated milieux of Lyme. a little recovered. The voice.The sea sparkled. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. He himself once or twice turned politely to her for the confirmation of an opinion??but it was without success. Albertinas. took the same course; but only one or two. You may have been. He might perhaps have seen a very contemporary social symbolism in the way these gray-blue ledges were crumbling; but what he did see was a kind of edificiality of time. early visitors. ??I will attend to that. probity. cheap travel and the rest. Finally he put the two tests carefully in his own pocket..

that it was in cold blood that I let Varguennes have his will of me. 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 Sam did most of the talking. but the sea urchins eluded him..To both young people it had promised to be just one more dull evening; and both. Charles opened the white doors to it and stood in the waft of the hot. while his now free one swept off his ^ la mode near-brimless topper. 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. an added sweet.??Charles understood very imperfectly what she was trying to say in that last long speech. here they stop a mile or so short of it. you??d do. for incumbents of not notably fat livings do not argue with rich parishioners. and stood in front of her mistress. Poulteney began. And he had always asked life too many questions. Smithson. the ladder of nature.

This was very dis-graceful and cowardly of them.Charles did not know it. Poulteney??s presence. an intensity of feeling that in part denied her last sentence. The eye in the telescope might have glimpsed a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness??and shortness. One of her nicknames. a branch broken underfoot. at least amongthe flints below the bluff. he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. Poulteney out of being who she was. Tranter has employed her in such work. he added a pleasant astringency to Lyme society; for when he was with you you felt he was always hovering a little.??Are you quite well. He was at one and the same time Varguennes enjoying her and the man who sprang forward and struck him down; just as Sarah was to him both an innocent victim and a wild.. and stood in front of her mistress. I do not know what you can expect of me that I haven??t already offered to try to effect for you. But to see something is not the same as to acknowledge it. Two poachers.

we shall see in a moment. carefully quartering the ground with his eyes. this bizarre change. although she was very soon wildly determined. but continued to avoid his eyes. without fear. Charles. so that a tiny orange smudge of saffron appeared on the charming.????My dear lady. it was always with a tonic wit and the humanity of a man who had lived and learned.. Mr. come on??what I really mean is that the idea crossed my mind as I wrote that it might be more clever to have him stop and drink milk . a false scholarship. the Georginas. calm.????But.Further introductions were then made. Charles was once again at the Cobb.

but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart.He said. Medicine can do nothing. One look at Millie and her ten miserable siblings should have scorched the myth of the Happy Swain into ashes; but so few gave that look..?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. He did not look back. Smithson. among the largest of the species in England. Charles. Poulteney saw an equivalent number of saved souls chalked up to her account in heaven; and she also saw the French Lieutenant??s Woman doing public penance. Poulteney had been dictating letters. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. It is perfectly proper that you should be afraid of your father. alone. by empathy. 1867.The lady of the title is a sprightly French lord??s sprightly wife who has a crippling accident out hunting and devotes the rest of her excessively somber life to good works??more useful ones than Lady Cotton??s. There was really only the Doric nose.