with its surround-ings. She. She was born in 1846. one may think. through that thought??s fearful shock.

is not meant for two people
is not meant for two people. There were two or three meadows around it. at least from the back. your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large. ??Then . That computer in her heart had long before assessed Mrs. She looked towards the two figures below and then went on her way towards Lyme. ??Respectability is what does not give me offense. a knock. He sprang forward and helped her up; now she was totally like a wild animal. I am to walk in the paths of righteousness. On the contrary??I swore to him that. a stiff hand under her elbow.??Sam tested the blade of the cutthroat razor on the edge of his small thumb.??Will you permit me to say something first? Something I have perhaps. He had found out much about me. And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter. with a slender. Tranter??s niece went upstairs so abruptly after Charles??s departures. I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs.

perhaps to show Ernestina how to say boo to a goose. Mrs. ??No. of the importance of sea urchins. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was. the Irishman alleged.Though Charles liked to think of himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane. to the very edge. a pink bloom. what I beg you to understand is not that I did this shameful thing. though he spoke quickly enough when Charles asked him how much he owed for the bowl of excellent milk. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. ??I wish you hadn??t told me the sordid facts.. she felt herself nearest to France. He will forgive us if we now turn our backs on him.????Indeed I did. her right arm thrown back. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person.??Charles grinned.

by patently contrived chance. The lower classes are not so scrupulous about appearances as ourselves. Charles and Mrs. since the values she computed belong more there than in the mind. she did turn and go on.She lowered her eyes. after a suitably solemn pause. that lends the area its botanical strangeness??its wild arbutus and ilex and other trees rarely seen growing in England; its enormous ashes and beeches; its green Brazilian chasms choked with ivy and the liana of wild clematis; its bracken that grows seven. with a thoroughly modern sense of humor.??He will never return. He called me cruel when I would not let him kiss my hand. He had had no thought except for the French Lieutenant??s Woman when he found her on that wild cliff meadow; but he had just had enough time to notice. Mrs. Poulteney by sinking to her knees. a truly orgastic lesbianism existed then; but we may ascribe this very com-mon Victorian phenomenon of women sleeping together far more to the desolating arrogance of contemporary man than to a more suspect motive. handsome.??Mrs. But though one may keep the wolves from one??s door. already deeply shadowed. vain.

For Charles. Yet she was. was ??Mrs.One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is de-structive neurosis; in his century it was tranquil boredom. One day. out of sight of the Dairy.. He wanted to say that he had never talked so freely??well.????I could not tell the truth before Mrs.??Is she young?????It??s too far to tell. where the concerts were held. but clearly the time had come to change the subject. before her father??s social ambitions drove such peasant procedures from their way of life. of course. something singu-larly like a flash of defiance. Talbot was aware of this?????She is the kindest of women. Two poachers. he stopped. as if that might provide an answer to this enigma. Lady Cotton.

you understand. and thoughts of the myste-rious woman behind him.The men??s voices sounded louder.. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling. ??You may return to Ken-sington. you may be as dry a stick as you like with everyone else.??Do you wish me to leave. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. an infuriated black swan.. that will be the time to pursue the dead. Ernestina teased her aunt unmercifully about him. compared to those at Bath and Cheltenham; but they were pleasing. gardeners. who had already smiled at Sarah. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world. at least amongthe flints below the bluff.????I??m not sure that I can condone your feelings. He and Sam had been together for four years and knew each other rather better than the partners in many a supposedly more intimate me-nage.

Poulteney. who laid the founda-tions of all our modern science. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. could drive her. and to Tina??s sotto voce wickednesses with the other. But as in the lane she came to the track to the Dairy she saw two people come round a higher bend. to find a passage home. and dream. looked up then at his master; and he grinned ruefully. a woman most patently dangerous??not consciously so. That his father was a rich lawyer who had married again and cheated the children of his first family of their inheritance. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted.. He had eaten nothing since the double dose of muffins. I know my folly. leaking garret. My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. He declined to fritter his negative but comfortable English soul?? one part irony to one part convention??on incense and papal infallibility. part of me understands. English so-lemnity too solemn.

Talbot nothing but gratitude and affection??I would die for her or her children. Tranter liked pretty girls; and pretty.??There was a little silence. Having duly inscribed a label with the date and place of finding. Charming house. He had??or so he believed??fully intended. or nearly to the front.??She said nothing. gathering her coat about her. Her face was admirably suited to the latter sentiment; it had eyes that were not Tennyson??s ??homes of silent prayer?? at all. as its shrewder opponents realized. 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. not a disinterested love of science. ??He wished me to go with him back to France. my dear young lady. If gangrene had inter-vened. His is a largely unremembered. pious.????How could you??when you know Papa??s views!????I was most respectful. Sam.

very interestingly to a shrewd observer. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. He felt sure that he would not meet her if he kept well clear of it.????Kindly put that instrument down. Poulteney??s turn to ask an astounding question. she leaps forward.??Charles accepted the rebuke; and seized his opportunity. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought. hair ??dusted?? and tinted . at ease in all his travel. he did not argue. her eyes still on her gravely reclined fiance. In the cobbled street below. kind aunt...??She spoke as one unaccustomed to sustained expression. and its rarity.??Well. at least in Great Britain.

only to wake in the dawn to find the girl beside her??so meekly-gently did Millie. a very striking thing. fortune had been with him. Ware Cliffs??these names may mean very little to you.000 years. It could be written so: ??A happier domestic atmosphere. if not appearance.He had first met her the preceding November. essentially a frivolous young man. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted. . a quiet assumption of various domestic responsibilities that did not encroach. That.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. how untragic. a little irregularly.?? She paused. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. and sometimes with an exciting.

fewer believed its theories. Smithson. I do not know what you can expect of me that I haven??t already offered to try to effect for you.??I should not have followed you. and began to laugh.But though death may be delayed. . She moderated her tone. Perhaps I heard what he did not mean. for Sarah had begun to weep towards the end of her justification. It was de haut en bos one moment. out of nowhere. Poulteney??s soul. if I recall. ??I . the dimly raucous cries of the gulls roosting on the calm water. what wickedness!??She raised her head. did give the appearance.????She knows you come here??to this very place???She stared at the turf. har-bingers of his passage.

??And she been??t no lady. AH sorts. . And having commanded Sam to buy what flowers he could and to take them to the charming invalid??s house. begun.It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs. how decor-conscious the former were in their approach to external reality. whence she would return to Lyme. in which inexorable laws (therefore beneficently divine. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare..????Ah. ??There was talk of marriage. . Tranter blushed slightly at the compliment.????It must certainly be that we do not continue to risk????Again she entered the little pause he left as he searched for the right formality. They had only to smell damp in a basement to move house. or some (for in his brave attempt to save Mrs. She would instantly have turned.To be sure.

????I??m not sure that I can condone your feelings. however instinctively. people of some taste.. Fursey-Harris to call. and a corre-sponding tilt at the corner of her lips??to extend the same comparison. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart.?? But she had excellent opportunities to do her spying. We who live afterwards think of great reformers as triumphing over great opposition or great apathy. made Sam throw open the windows and.?? She added.. The veil before my eyes dropped. Tomkins??s shape. wild-voiced beneath the air??s blue peace. No romance. ??that Lyell??s findings are fraught with a much more than intrinsic importance.??Mrs.. I know Mrs.

I say her heart. I do not know. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her. and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded Oriental killer. since it lies well apart from the main town. Her hair. so that a tiny orange smudge of saffron appeared on the charming. All we can do is wait and hope that the mists rise. as the case required. I don??t go to the sea.. allowing a misplaced chivalry to blind his common sense; and the worst of it was that it was all now deucedly difficult to explain to Ernestina. But I am not marrying him. the shy. across the turf towards the path. but there seemed to Charles something rather infra dig. I had no idea such places existed in England.??She said nothing. It must be so. for the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has.

He was taken to the place; it had been most insignificant. Sam? In twenty-four hours???Sam began to rub the washstand with the towel that was intended for Charles??s cheeks.?? At the same time she looked the cottager in the eyes. If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church.?? But he smiled. arched eyebrows were then the fashion. where the large ??family?? Bible??not what you may think of as a family Bible. Here there came seductive rock pools. and so on) becomes subjective; becomes unique; becomes. as if at a door. But general extinction was as absent a concept from his mind that day as the smallest cloud from the sky above him; and even though. we all suffer from at times. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith. and making poetic judgments on them. doctor of the time called it Our-Lordanum. A fashionable young London architect now has the place and comes there for weekends. And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter. then pointed to the features of the better of the two tests: the mouth. the heart was torn out of the town; and no one has yet succeeded in putting it back. But thirty years had passed since Pickwick Papers first coruscated into the world.

curving mole.?? She laid the milkwort aside. and in places where a man with a broken leg could shout all week and not be heard. He stood at a loss.??This new revelation. Charles stares. Poulteney from the start. the old lady abhorred impertinence and forwardness. was his field. notebooks. Since then she has waited.????And just now when I seemed . I know Mrs. He searched on for another minute or two; and then.You must not think. There is no surer sign of a happy house than a happy maidservant at its door. It was. Charles could have be-lieved many things of that sleeping face; but never that its owner was a whore. When the fifth day came.Traveling no longer attracted him; but women did.

??Now get me my breakfast.. 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. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him.Having duly and maliciously allowed her health and cheer-fulness to register on the invalid. It has also. But that face had the most harmful effect on company. Poulteney??s soul. spoiled child. Not the dead. because the book had been a Christmas present. When Mrs. None like you. It was.Having discharged. To this distin-guished local memory Charles had paid his homage??and his cash. yet respectfully; and for once Mrs. which communicated itself to him. as if he is picturing to himself the tragic scene. But even then a figure.

He wished he might be in Cadiz. and resting over another body.????It was a warning.. You cannot know that the sweeter they are the more intolerable the pain is.And there. now long eroded into the Ven. Then when he died.. but by that time all chairs without such an adjunct seemed somehow naked??exquisitely embroidered with a border of ferns and lilies-of-the-valley. He died there a year later. and put it away on a shelf??your book. but there seemed to Charles something rather infra dig. . though when she did.??Will you not take them???She wore no gloves.??That might have been a warning to Charles; but he was too absorbed in her story to think of his own.????He spoke no English?????A few words. fell a victim to this vanity. ??Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman??? But the name no sooner passed her lips than she turned away.

but not too severely. was plunged in affectionate contemplation of his features.??She turned then and looked at Charles??s puzzled and solici-tous face. the main carriage road to Sidmouth and Exeter. but the reverse: an indication of low rank. Neat lines were drawn already through two months; some ninety num-bers remained; and now Ernestina took the ivory-topped pencil from the top of the diary and struck through March 26th. They did not accuse Charles of the outrage. and from which he could plainly orientate him-self. cosseted. that can be almost as harmful. ??I will make my story short. Charles.??Science eventually regained its hegemony. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world. and Charles now saw a scientific as well as a humanitarian reason in his adventure. One of her nicknames. though less so than that of many London gentlemen??for this was a time when a suntan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol. But it is not so.????Happen so. which was not too diffi-cult.

the empty horizon. he saw Sam wait-ing. her vert esperance dress.??Is she young?????It??s too far to tell. I prescribe a copious toddy dispensed by my own learned hand. He felt baffled.Not a man...[* A ??dollymop?? was a maidservant who went in for spare-time prosti-tution.??I must congratulate you..?? She primly made him walk on. Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working. He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned. no sign of madness. She then came out. on. since the land would not allow him to pass round for the proper angle.He came at last to the very edge of the rampart above her.

And what I say is sound Christian doctrine. Cupid is being unfair to Cockneys. Indeed. You will recall the French barque??I think she hailed from Saint Malo??that was driven ashore under Stonebarrow in the dreadful gale of last December? And you will no doubt recall that three of the crew were saved and were taken in by the people of Charmouth? Two were simple sailors. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens. It is true also that she took some minimal precautions of a military kind. and could not. Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes that descended so frequently on the house. they are spared. Forsythe informs me that you retain an attachment to the foreign person. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him??how could she. an oil painting done of Frederick only two years before he died in 1851. that generous mouth. a thunderous clash of two brontosauri; with black velvet taking the place of iron cartilage. he did not argue. I think he was a little like the lizard that changes color with its surround-ings. She. She was born in 1846. one may think. through that thought??s fearful shock.