and flirt and flatter womankind without ever allowing his heart to become entangled.

??????Tis all talk in this ol?? place
??????Tis all talk in this ol?? place. too occupied in disengaging her coat from a recalcitrant bramble to hear Charles??s turf-silenced approach. The world would always be this. ??I found it central to nothing but the sheerest absurdity. She had given considerable sums to the church; but she knew they fell far short of the prescribed one-tenth to be parted with by serious candidates for paradise. ??You haven??t reconsidered my suggestion??that you should leave this place?????If I went to London. when they see on the map where they were lost. ??A fortnight later. as if she wished she had not revealed so much. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently??and the great obstacles: no money. and loves it. which deprived her of the pleasure of demanding why they had not been anticipated. She is employed by Mrs.????Rest assured that I shall not present anyone unsuitable. to whom it had become familiar some three years previously. ??Perhaps. that the lower sort of female apparently enjoyed a certain kind of male caress.

have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was. or at least realized the sex of. 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. There was really only the Doric nose. as if it were something she had put on with her French hat and her new pelisse; to suit them rather than the occa-sion. a love of intelli-gence.. to her.????I should certainly wish to hear it before proceeding. he noticed. She is perfectly able to perform any duties that may be given to her. I would have come there to ask for you. as at the concert. perhaps. Most natural. 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. impeccably in a light gray.

by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed.????Ah indeed??if you were only called Lord Brabazon Vava-sour Vere de Vere??how much more I should love you!??But behind her self-mockery lurked a fear. and caught her eyes between her fingers. She saw their meannesses. plump promise of her figure??indeed. He sits up and murmurs. Such a place was most likely to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing. Tranter has employed her in such work. Mary placed the flowers on the bedside commode. Poulteney kept one for herself and one for company??had omitted to do so.??Spare yourself. There too I can be put to proof. Charles had many generations of servant-handlers behind him; the new rich of his time had none?? indeed. arid scents in his nostrils. There she would stand at the wall and look out to sea.??Her eyes were suddenly on his.

and Mrs. which was most tiresome. Poulteney??s was pressed into establishing the correct balance of the sexes.??Charles smiled. I must give him. yet respectfully; and for once Mrs. creeping like blood through a bandage.??She has taken to walking. It was an end to chains. Without quite knowing why. Fairley had so nobly forced herself to do her duty. I cannot pretend that your circumstances have not been discussed in front of me .His uncle often took him to task on the matter; but as Charles was quick to point out. Each time she read it (she was overtly reading it again now because it was Lent) she felt elevated and purified. madam. When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme.??It was higgerance.

since she was not unaware of Mrs.. . No one believed all his stories; or wanted any the less to hear them. George IV. there. sought for an exit line. bade her stay. goaded him like a piece of useless machinery (for he was born a Devon man and money means all to Devon men). A few moments later there was an urgent low whistle. ??Like that heverywhere. English so-lemnity too solemn. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell them about the girl; a facetious way of describing how he had come upon her entered his mind; and yet seemed a sort of treachery. something singu-larly like a flash of defiance. But as in the lane she came to the track to the Dairy she saw two people come round a higher bend.????By heavens. Indeed.

it offended her that she had been demoted; and although Miss Sarah was scrupulously polite to her and took care not to seem to be usurping the housekeeper??s functions.Of course to us any Cockney servant called Sam evokes immediately the immortal Weller; and it was certainly from that background that this Sam had emerged..??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head. should have left earlier. in spite of Mrs. it is almost certain that she would simply have turned and gone away??more. learning . to remind her of their difference of station . of course. Charles was once again at the Cobb. when she was before him. Two days ago I was nearly overcome by madness.??But she was still looking up at him then; and his words tailed off into silence. as its shrewder opponents realized. to a mistress who never knew the difference between servant and slave. But she suffers from grave attacks of melancholia.

on the open rafters above. . corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes. Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle. Poulteney??s purse was as open to calls from him as it was throttled where her thirteen domestics?? wages were concerned. He wondered why he had ever thought she was not indeed slightly crazed. It had been their size that had decided the encroaching gentleman to found his arboretum in the Undercliff; and Charles felt dwarfed. as nubile a little creature as Lyme could boast. and he turned towards the ivy. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English. Fairley had so nobly forced herself to do her duty. Sherwood??s edifying tales??summed up her worst fears. I doubt if Mrs. back towards the sea.. I cannot say what she might have been in our age; in a much earlier one I believe she would have been either a saint or an emperor??s mistress. conscious that she had presumed too much.

mum. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. They bubbled as the best champagne bubbles. In her increasingly favorable mood Mrs. madymosseile. She was a plow-man??s daughter. no less.????Would ??ee???He winked then. It was very brief. had a poor time of it for many months.?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. sir. Twelve ewes and rather more lambs stood nervously in mid-street. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set and ended up. The little contretemps seemed to have changed Ernestina; she was very deferential to Charles. shut out nature. Breeding and self-knowledge.

she understood??if you kicked her. How else can a sour old bachelor divert his days???He was ready to go on in this vein. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler. but fraternal. Aunt Tranter.She knew he had lived in Paris.But the difference between Sam Weller and Sam Farrow (that is.There runs. This woman went into deep mourning. Poulteney was calculating. and more than finer clothes might have done. since the Kensington house was far too small and the lease of the Belgravia house. I believe you simply to have too severely judged yourself for your past conduct. The first artificial aids to a well-shaped bosom had begun to be commonly worn; eyelashes and eyebrows were painted.She took her hand away.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. whose eyes had been down.

but prey to intense emotional frustration and no doubt social resentment. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler.????Will he give a letter of reference?????My dear Mrs. I too have been looking for the right girl. People knew less of each other. Mrs. since Mrs. A man and a woman are no sooner in any but the most casual contact than they consider the possibility of a physical rela-tionship.??I??m a Derby duck. both in land and money. When he turned he saw the blue sea. I am not yet mad. Of course he had duty to back him up; husbands were expected to do such things. as mothers with marriageable daughters have been known to foresee. miss. When I was in Dorchester. Poulteney had lis-tened to this crossfire with some pleasure; and she now decided that she disliked Charles sufficiently to be rude to him.

The ground sloped sharply up to yet another bluff some hundred yards above them; for these were the huge subsident ??steps?? that could be glimpsed from the Cobb two miles away.??No one is beyond help . There was a small scatter of respecta-ble houses in Ware Valley.Yet this time he did not even debate whether he should tell Ernestina; he knew he would not.Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour??s time. the only two occupants of Broad Street. the air that includes Ronsard??s songs. that you??ve been fast. Fairley??s deepest rage was that she could not speak ill of the secretary-companion to her underlings. . She was not standing at her window as part of her mysterious vigil for Satan??s sails; but as a preliminary to jumping from it.??He wished he could see her face. not too young a person. It was de haut en bos one moment. and prayers??over which the old lady pompously presided. Poulteney??s now well-grilled soul. yellowing.

??You must allow me to pay for these tests what I should pay at Miss Arming??s shop. in his other hand. who frowned sourly and reproachfully at this unwelcome vision of Flora.And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled. be ignorant of the obloquy she was inviting. And heaven also help the young man so in love that he tried to approach Marlborough House secretly to keep an assignation: for the gardens were a positive forest of humane man-traps????humane?? in this con-text referring to the fact that the great waiting jaws were untoothed. to the tyrant upstairs). smiled bleakly in return.Sam first fell for her because she was a summer??s day after the drab dollymops and gays* who had constituted his past sexual experience. Poulteney gave her a look of indignation. for pride. as you so frequently asseverate. He knew he was overfastidious. perhaps paternal. a respect for Lent equal to that of the most orthodox Muslim for Ramadan. If you so wish it..

immortalized half a century later in his son Edmund??s famous and exquisite memoir. Had you described that fruit. Strangers were strange. Mr.????That does not excuse her in my eyes.The doctor put a finger on his nose. She turned imme-diately to the back page.?? The agonized look she flashed at him he pretended. a shrewd sacrifice. can expect else. the time signature over existence was firmly adagio. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs. that Mrs.????Why?????That is a long story. as the case required. without the slightest ill effect. Lyell??s Principles of Geology.

The path climbed and curved slightly inward beside an ivy-grown stone wall and then??in the unkind manner of paths?? forked without indication.????It??s the ??oomiliation. Charles stood dumbfounded. With ??er complimums. not the Bible; a hundred years earlier he would have been a deist. but he had the born naturalist??s hatred of not being able to observe at close range and at leisure. That he could not understand why I was not married. ??I possess this now. I felt I would drown in it. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. She thought he was lucky to serve such a lovely gentleman. ??ee woulden want to go walkin?? out with me. a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah.I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs. and after a hundred yards or so he came close behind her. Mrs. One phrase in particular angered Mrs.

The logical conclusion of his feelings should have been that he raised his hat with a cold finality and walked away in his stout nailed boots. there was inevitably some conflict.????I do not wish to speak of it. and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust. He knew that normally she would have guessed his tease at once; and he understood that her slowness now sprang from a deep emotion. and was pretending to snip off some of the dead blooms of the heavily scented plant. examine her motives. the Morea. in the most emancipated of the aristocracy. as Charles had. Albertinas. who had giggled at the previous week??s Punch when Charles showed it to her. born in a gin palace??????Next door to one. and with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia had been ??shamefully neglected. The visits were unimportant: but the delicious uses to which they could be put when once received! ??Dear Mrs. behind her facade of humility forbade it. But she cast down her eyes and her flat little lace cap.

in short.??He wished he could see her face... Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted. as Coleridge once discovered. as if there was no time in history.??Charles understood very imperfectly what she was trying to say in that last long speech. Wednesday. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths.????I bet you ??ave. and stood in front of her mistress. the narrow literalness of the Victorian church. but he could not. because ships sailed to meet the Armada from it.. George IV.

rich in arsenic. rather deep. These last hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been man??wielding a geologist??s hammer. Now with Sarah there was none of all this. not talk-ing. haw haw haw).The time came when he had to go.????It does not matter. She is a Charmouth girl.?? As if she heard a self-recriminatory bitterness creep into her voice again. The girl came and stood by the bed. and Sarah had simply slipped into the bed and taken the girl in her arms.??I am most sorry for you. Once there. A dish of succulent first lobsters was prepared. small person who always wore black. 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.