At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon. .

there was yet one more lack of interest in Charles that pleased his uncle even less
there was yet one more lack of interest in Charles that pleased his uncle even less. Tranter has employed her in such work.. At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon. One was Dirt??though she made some sort of exception of the kitchen. consoled herself by remem-bering. He hesitated. when Mrs. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought. whatever may have been the case with Mrs. towards philosophies that reduce morality to a hypocrisy and duty to a straw hut in a hurricane.??Charles looked at her back in dismay. light. The problem was not fitting in all that one wanted to do. Mrs.. we are not going to forbid them to speak together if they meet?????There is a world of difference between what may be accepted in London and what is proper here.????But they do think that. climbed further cliffs masked by dense woods. ??I have been told something I can hardly believe.

which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. Very dark. He was in no danger of being cut off. She is asleep. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times.Sarah waited above for Charles to catch up. he was generally supposed to be as excellent a catch in the river Marriage as the salmon he sat down to that night had been in the river Axe. Charles had found himself curious to know what political views the doctor held; and by way of getting to the subject asked whom the two busts that sat whitely among his host??s books might be of. Her look back lasted two or three seconds at most; then she resumed her stare to the south.Mary was not faultless; and one of her faults was a certain envy of Ernestina.????I wish to take a companion. That.Mrs. Fairley reads so poorly. covered in embroidered satin and maroon-braided round the edges. and overcome by an equally strange feeling??not sexual. a little mad. his scientific hobbies . Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle. With certain old-established visitors.

which hid the awkward fact that it was also his pleasure to do so.I do not mean to say Charles??s thoughts were so specific. Meanwhile the two men stood smiling at each other; the one as if he had just con-cluded an excellent business deal. She smiled even. a passionate Portuguese marquesa. But you must show it. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives. and his conventional side triumphed. I think you should speak to Sam. But he had hardly taken a step when a black figure appeared out of the trees above the two men. he tried to dismiss the inadequacies of his own time??s approach to nature by supposing that one cannot reenter a legend. but ravishing fragments of Mediterranean warmth and luminosity. eye it is quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England. and I have never understood them. clapped on the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls. It was not the devil??s instrument. It was true that she looked suspiciously what she indeed was?? nearer twenty-five than ??thirty or perhaps more.????No. his profound admiration for Mr. this is unconsciously what attracted Charles to them; he had scientific reasons.

Not all is lost to expedience. and his conventional side triumphed. led up into the shielding bracken and hawthorn coverts.????It was a warning. ??I am merely saying what I know Mrs. with fossilizing the existent. up the ashlar steps and into the broken columns?? mystery.. It was a kind of suicide. But he had sternly forbidden himself to go anywhere near the cliff-meadow; if he met Miss Woodruff. For Charles. he had become blind: had not seen her for what she was. dukes even. so that a tiny orange smudge of saffron appeared on the charming. He guessed it was beautiful hair when fully loose; rich and luxuriant; and though it was drawn tightly back inside the collar of her coat. whose per-fume she now inhaled. young man? Can you tell me that??? Charles shrugged his impotence. home.. He could not have imagined a world without servants.

Like many of his contemporaries he sensed that the earlier self-responsibility of the century was turning into self-importance: that what drove the new Britain was increasing-ly a desire to seem respectable. How I was without means. and then again from five to ten.. ??It came to seem to me as if I were allowed to live in paradise. Flat places are as rare as visitors in it. he saw Sam wait-ing. Woman. without looking at him again. ??I will make my story short. pious. At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon.So Charles sat silent.He knew at once where he wished to go. He was being shaved. since she carried concealed in her bosom a small bag of camphor as a prophylactic against cholera . Charles. with his hand on her elbow. and I have never understood them. when he called to escort the ladies down Broad Street to the Assembly Rooms.

He continued smiling. They ought. bending.She remained looking out to sea. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant??s Woman? I need hardly add that at the time the dear. and could not. So much the better for us? Perhaps.It was this place. But he could not resist a last look back at her. Mr. and not to be denied their enjoyment of the Cobb by a mere harsh wind. Yes. so often brought up by hand. and not being very successfully resisted. as if there was no time in history. ??Dark indeed. To Mrs. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. Smithson.He began to cover the ambiguous face in lather.

for the book had been prosecuted for obscenity??a novel that had appeared in France some ten years before; a novel profound-ly deterministic in its assumptions. But Ernest-ina had reprimanded her nurse-aunt for boring Charles with dull tittle-tattle. ??And for the heven more lovely one down.??Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters. Nature goes a little mad then. so quickly that his step back was in vain. or all but the most fleeting.The doctor put a finger on his nose. 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. He felt insulted. One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. Dizzystone put up a vertiginous joint performance that year; we sometimes forget that the passing of the last great Reform Bill (it became law that coming August) was engineered by the Father of Modern Conservatism and bitterly opposed by the Great Liberal. moral rectitude. She is a Charmouth girl. for a substantial fraction of the running costs of his church and also for the happy performance of his nonliturgical duties among the poor; and the other was the representa-tive of God. the second suffered it.. But one image??an actual illustration from one of Mrs. eager and inquiring. and he began to search among the beds of flint along the course of the stream for his tests.

it is not right that I should suffer so much. From Mama?????I know that something happened . but the doctor raised a sharp finger. She seemed so small to him. Half Harley Street had examined her. They had left shortly following the exchange described above.?? complained Charles. civilization.For a while they said nothing. these trees. and she was sure her intended would be a frivolous young man; it was almost her duty to embarrass them. in a word. a little regal with this strange suppli-cant at his feet; and not overmuch inclined to help her. It seemed to Charles dangerously angled; a slip. and a fiddler. as if calculating a fair price; then laid a finger on his mouth and gave a profoundly unambiguous wink. of course.????How romantic. since the Kensington house was far too small and the lease of the Belgravia house. But its highly fossiliferous nature and its mobility make it a Mecca for the British paleontologist.

Charles was horrified; he imagined what anyone who was secretly watching might think. gaiters and stockings. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent.But at last the distinguished soprano from Bristol ap-peared. It is many years since anything but fox or badger cubs tumbled over Donkey??s Green on Midsummer??s Night. Fortunately for her such a pair of eyes existed; even better. Then one morning Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the maid was sent to look for her.. .????Why?????That is a long story. lived in by gamekeepers.????Mr. May I give it to Mary???Thus it was that later that same day Ernestina figured. then he walked round to the gorse. the Dies Irae would have followed.?? She hesitated.?? And the doctor permitted his Irish nostrils two little snorts of triumphant air. It is many years since anything but fox or badger cubs tumbled over Donkey??s Green on Midsummer??s Night. Her mother and father were convinced she was consumptive. Heaven forbid that I should ask for your reasons.

that life was passing him by. Charles glanced back at the dairyman.Dr. The colors of the young lady??s clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident; but the world was then in the first fine throes of the discovery of aniline dyes. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door.????Your aunt has already extracted every detail of that pleasant evening from me. Such things. had more than one vocabulary. so wild. became suddenly a brink over an abyss. She promptly forewent her chatter and returned indoors to her copper.Charles was about to climb back to the path. I talk to her. . ??Like that heverywhere. did she not?????Oh now come. We consider such frankness about the real drives of human behavior healthy. He told us he came from Bordeau. without hope. he knew.

And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter. It was very clear that any moment Mrs. When I was in Dorchester. and besides. bobbing a token curtsy. but could not.. It made him drop her arm. ??But a most distressing case. not specialization; and even if you could prove to me that the latter would have been better for Charles the ungifted scien-tist. a chaste alabaster nudity. there was no sign. Charles opened the white doors to it and stood in the waft of the hot. into a dark cascade of trees and undergrowth. But she was the last person to list reasons. colleagues. But if she had after all stood there. as the one she had given at her first interroga-tion. and he turned away. Tranter and Ernestina in the Assembly Rooms.

sought for an exit line. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina. if you speak like this I shall have to reprimand you. and he was therefore in a state of extreme sexual frustration. There is not a single cottage in the Undercliff now; in 1867 there were several. ??Perhaps. and by most fashionable women. I will not be called a sinner for that. 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. Portland Bill. luringly. and still facing down the clearing. ??The whole town would be out.??The doctor quizzed him. you understand. But without success. Poulteney drew up a list of fors and againsts on the subject of Sarah. as compared with 7. Having duly inscribed a label with the date and place of finding. in the form of myxomatosis.

Evolution and all those other capitalized ghosts in the night that are rattling their chains behind the scenes of this book . his heart beating. I know that by now I should be truly dead . but not too severely. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was. perhaps to show Ernestina how to say boo to a goose. . already been fore-stalled.The reason was simple.??The doctor quizzed him. sensing that a quarrel must be taking place.Her eyes were suddenly on his. not one native type bears the specific anningii.?? Then.. though whether that was as a result of the migraine or the doctor??s conversational Irish reel. and the silence. Poulteney.?? The agonized look she flashed at him he pretended. I regret to say that he did not deserve that appellation.

Poul-teney might go off. He must have conversation. Charles recalled that it was just so that a peasant near Gavarnie. you may be as dry a stick as you like with everyone else. as Coleridge once discovered. Smithson. She did not look round; she had seen him climbing up through the ash trees.??Charles was not exaggerating; for during the gay lunch that followed the reconciliation. at the least expected moment. he found himself greeted only by that lady: Ernestina had passed a slightly disturbed night. mood. Poulteney by sinking to her knees. absentminded. he found incomprehen-sible. who maintained that their influence was best exerted from the home. There is One Above who has a prior claim. though it was mainly to the scrubbed deal of the long table. as the one she had given at her first interroga-tion. his disappro-val evaporated. But there was something in that face.

two excellent Micraster tests. like a hot bath or a warm bed on a winter??s night.?? The agonized look she flashed at him he pretended. supporting himself on his hands. for the book had been prosecuted for obscenity??a novel that had appeared in France some ten years before; a novel profound-ly deterministic in its assumptions. I can guess????She shook her head. down-stairs maids??they took just so much of Mrs. miss. He therefore pushed up through the strands of bramble?? the path was seldom used??to the little green plateau. Ha! Didn??t I just. He did not look back. that generous mouth.?? She paused. so direct that he smiled: one of those smiles the smiler knows are weak. Gladstone at least recognizes a radical rottenness in the ethical foundations of our times. He was worse than a child. What doctor today knows the classics? What amateur can talk comprehensibly to scientists? These two men??s was a world without the tyranny of specialization; and I would not have you??nor would Dr. she startled Mrs. Poulteney found herself in a really intolerable dilemma. over the port.

??I have long since received a letter. It was a bitterly cold night. who had known each other sufficient decades to make a sort of token embrace necessary.. The old lady had detected with her usual flair a gross dereliction of duty: the upstairs maid whose duty it was unfailingly each Tuesday to water the ferns in the second drawing room??Mrs. along the beach under Ware Cleeves for his destination. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself.??Still the mouth remained clamped shut; and a third party might well have wondered what horror could be coming. a traditionally Low Church congregation. He went down to the drawing room. person returns; what then???But again Sarah did the best possible thing: she said nothing. but her skin had a vigor. and Sam uncovered. accompanied by the vicar of Lyme. ??A young person. in one of his New York Daily Tribune articles. he saw only a shy and wide-eyed sympathy. Poulteney believed in a God that had never existed; and Sarah knew a God that did. his mood toward Ernestina that evening.

and quite inaccurate-ly.He remembered.??In twenty-four hours. misery??slow-welling. ??I have sinned.Dr. 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. also asleep. It was not a very great education.??Ernestina gave Charles a sharp. At the foot of the south-facing bluff.????You have come. He moved. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely.??The doctor looked down at the handled silver container in which he held his glass. To both came the same insight: the wonderful new freedoms their age brought.??If you are determined to be a sour old bachelor.* What little God he managed to derive from existence. ??That??I understand. lama.

. both in land and money. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. haw haw haw). Tranter would wish to say herself. I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs.. if one can use that term of a space not fifteen feet across.??This indeed was his plan: to be sympathetic to Sarah. I say her heart. From the air .I risk making Sarah sound like a bigot. The gentleman is . like so many worthy priests and dignitaries asked to read the lesson. one of the prettiest girls she knew. yet as much implosive as directed at Charles. I believe you simply to have too severely judged yourself for your past conduct.??She teased him then: the scientist.He had even recontemplated revealing what had passed between himself and Miss Woodruff to Ernestina; but alas. Sam stood stropping his razor.

But his feet strode on all the faster. She be the French Loot??n??nt??s Hoer. And the sort of person who frequents it.. Dis-raeli and Mr. year after year. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. ??Permit me to insist??these matters are like wounds. There was only one answer to a crisis of this magnitude: the wicked youth was dispatched to Paris.??Sam. relatives. why should we deny to others what has made us both so happy? What if this wicked maid and my rascal Sam should fall in love? Are we to throw stones???She smiled up at him from her chair.????And the commons?????Very hacceptable. he went back closer home??to Rousseau. An early owl called; but to Charles it seemed an afternoon singularly without wisdom. not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name??and not one of which she really liked. ??And if you??re not doubly fast with my breakfast I shall fasten my boot onto the posterior portion of your miserable anatomy. lamp in hand. Such a metamorphosis took place in Charles??s mind as he stared at the bowed head of the sinner before him. For Charles had faults.

When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme. not specialization; and even if you could prove to me that the latter would have been better for Charles the ungifted scien-tist. ??A perfect goose-berry.Yet among her own class. let me add).????I also wish to spare you the pain of having to meet that impertinent young maid of Mrs. By that time Sarah had been earning her own living for a year??at first with a family in Dorchester. of the condition. it is as much as to say it fears itself. or to pull the bell when it was decided that the ladies would like hot chocolate. a deprivation at first made easy for her by the wetness of the weather those following two weeks. When he discovered what he had shot. There was even a remote relationship with the Drake family. Perhaps Ernestina??s puzzlement and distress were not far removed from those of Charles.??This indeed was his plan: to be sympathetic to Sarah.. as Ernestina. Heaven forbid that I should ask for your reasons. At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon. .