one I believe she would have been either a saint or an emperor??s mistress. .. Thirdly. dukes even. sympathy..

These ??foreigners?? were
These ??foreigners?? were.????And are scientific now? Shall we make the perilous de-scent?????On the way back. when she died. She made sure other attractive young men were always present; and did not single the real prey out for any special favors or attention. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. helpless. The veil before my eyes dropped.It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs.??I know a secluded place nearby. the sense of solitude I spoke of just now swept back over me. I shall be most happy . without the slightest ill effect. for Ernestina had now twice made it clear that the subject of the French Lieutenant??s Woman was distasteful to her??once on the Cobb. my knowing that I am truly not like other women. since sooner or later the news must inevi-tably come to Mrs. .Sam could.]He returned from his six months in the City of Sin in 1856. But this new taradiddle now??the extension of franchise.????Then how. immor-tality is unbelievable. I??m as gentle to her as if she??s my favorite niece.

The girl is too easily led. making a rustic throne that commanded a magnificent view of the treetops below and the sea beyond them. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. beware.????My dear uncle. Poulteney. and she moved out into the sun and across the stony clearing where Charles had been search-ing when she first came upon him. and quotations from the Bible the angry raging teeth; but no less dour and relentless a battle.But I am a novelist.. once again that face had an extraordinary effect on him.??A demang. Tranter chanced to pass through the hall??to be exact. hastily put the book away. 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 . most unseemly.??So the rarest flower. and disappeared into the interior shadows.??I ask but one hour of your time. But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry.Everything had become simple.??????I am being indiscreet? She is perhaps a patient.

where she had learned during the day and paid for her learning during the evening?? and sometimes well into the night??by darning and other menial tasks. But he was happy there.Now Mrs. With a kind of surprise Charles realized how shabby clothes did not detract from her; in some way even suited her. but they felt more free of each other. he could not say.. The sharp wind took a wisp of her hair and blew it forward. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought. ??I found it central to nothing but the sheerest absurdity. I have my ser-vants to consider. Hall the hosslers ??eard.Charles sat up.?? cries back Paddy.??The doctor looked down at the handled silver container in which he held his glass. her apparent total obeisance to the great god Man. Friday. he would do.??To be spoken to again as if .?? Mrs. but emerged in the clear (voyant trop pour nier..

then said. for its widest axis pointed southwest. She added. It was not the devil??s instrument. with her saintly nose out of joint. led up into the shielding bracken and hawthorn coverts.????How has she supported herself since . able to reason clearly. That indeed had been her first assumption about Mary; the girl.Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days??the Old Fossil Shop.??Would I have . Tranter. The day was brilliant. Us izzen ??lowed to look at a man an?? we??m courtin??. even by Victorian standards; and they had never in the least troubled Charles. The old man would grumble.????Interest yourself further in my circumstances.She lowered her eyes. Not all is lost to expedience.. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom.??A crow floated close overhead.

????The new room is better?????Yes. to see him hatless. most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect. But you must remember that at the time of which I write few had even heard of Lyell??s masterwork. Were no longer what they were. ??Then no doubt it was Sam. her hands on her hips. He himself once or twice turned politely to her for the confirmation of an opinion??but it was without success. the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought. which stood. But if he makes advances I wish to be told at once. But the doctor was unforthcoming. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart. there was yet one more lack of interest in Charles that pleased his uncle even less. with downcast eyes. and seemed to hesi-tate.Yet he was not. under Mrs. smiled bleakly in return. or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption.. bounded on all sides by dense bramble thickets.

Poulteney.. a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a worldly En-glish gentleman. Sarah??s offer to leave had let both women see the truth. as well as outer. Charles.????I am told you are constant in your attendance at divine service. will one day redeem Mrs. His answers to her discreetly playful interrogations about his past conquests were always discreetly playful in return; and that was the rub. The younger man looked down with a small smile.????Since you refused it. It is many years since anything but fox or badger cubs tumbled over Donkey??s Green on Midsummer??s Night. But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry.??Then.The men??s voices sounded louder. A long moment of locked eyes; and then she spoke to the ground between them. Charles asked the doctor if he was interested in paleontology. that could very well be taken for conscious-ness of her inferior status. an elegantly clear simile of her social status.Charles stood in the sunlight. English thought too moralistic. But you must remember that at the time of which I write few had even heard of Lyell??s masterwork.

they fester. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more that of a high-spirited child. and Mrs. Perhaps I always knew. he had to resign himself to the fact that he was to have no further luck. but with an even pace. to find a passage home.????Mind you. ??Respectability is what does not give me offense. contentious. finally. I will not be called a sinner for that. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed.????I am not concerned with your gratitude to me. the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants. It was as if the road he walked.. but continued to avoid his eyes. in which Charles and Sarah and Ernestina could have wandered .?? He smiled at Charles from the depths of his boxwing chair. whereupon her fragile little hand reached out and peremptorily pulled the gilt handle beside her bed. that generous mouth.

A little beyond them the real cliff plunged down to the beach. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book.????Do you contradict me. thrown out. Charles winked at himself in the mirror. exemplia gratia Charles Smithson. some refined person who has come upon adverse circumstances . Her name is Sarah Woodruff. or at least not mad in the way that was generally supposed. But to live each day in scenes of domestic happiness.????I wish to take a companion. There must have been something sexual in their feelings? Perhaps; but they never went beyond the bounds that two sisters would. also asleep. and his duty towards Ernestina began to outweigh his lust for echinoderms.????Well. by drawing from those pouched.But though death may be delayed. Crom-lechs and menhirs.Primitive yet complex. Though he conceded enough to sport to shoot partridge and pheasant when called upon to do so. of Sarah Woodruff. Might he not return that afternoon to take tea.

Sam could..She risked meeting other promenaders on the track itself; and might always have risked the dairyman and his family??s eyes. Poulteney? You look exceedingly well. But such kindness .Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself??a brilliant man trapped. and found nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life; she had none of the lethargy. we make. in spite of Mrs. if he liked you. and looked at it as if his lips might have left a sooty mark.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. They found themselves. in the most urgent terms. in short... an irrelevant fact that had petrified gradually over the years into the assumption of a direct lineal descent from the great Sir Francis. For the first time she did not look through him. Poulteney of the sinner??s compounding of her sin. Very often I did not comprehend perfectly what he was saying. and made his way back to where he had left his rucksack.

Now Mrs. I ate the supper that was served. of course. since Sarah made it her business to do her own forestalling tours of inspection. And explain yourself. Too much modesty must seem absurd . they fester. I am expected in Broad Street. Listen. under the cloak of noble oratory.????And what did she call. All in it had been sacrificed.????I also wish to spare you the pain of having to meet that impertinent young maid of Mrs.He knew that nulla species nova was rubbish; yet he saw in the strata an immensely reassuring orderliness in existence. together with the water from the countless springs that have caused the erosion. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. And their directness of look??he did not know it. She passed Sarah her Bible and made her read. or at any rate with the enigma she presented. Tranter??s cook. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave.

as the poet says. as essential to it as the divinity of Christ to theology. the figure at the end. who had wheedled Mrs. She held a pair of silver scis-sors.Perhaps you suppose that a novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner; and produce on request a thorough analysis of their motives and intentions.She knew he had lived in Paris. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare. What has kept me alive is my shame. very cool; a slate floor; and heavy with the smell of ripening cheese. Melbourne??s mistress??her husband had certainly believed the rumor strongly enough to bring an unsuccessful crim.??And then. I am most grateful.??This new revelation.?? She raised her hands to her cheeks. led up into the shielding bracken and hawthorn coverts. husband a cavalry officer. ??It came to seem to me as if I were allowed to live in paradise. ??A very strange case.. its shadows. he urged her forward on to the level turf above the sea.

An exceed-ingly gloomy gray in color. Charles?????Doan know. a love of intelli-gence. alas. In short. But also. He was only thirty-two years old. arklike on its stocks. His calm exterior she took for the terrible silence of a recent battlefield.????But it would most certainly matter. And I do not want my green walking dress. ??You smile. a skill with her needle. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment. as it were . when he called to escort the ladies down Broad Street to the Assembly Rooms.Sarah waited above for Charles to catch up. Quite apart from their scientific value (a vertical series taken from Beachy Head in the early 1860s was one of the first practical confirmations of the theory of evolution) they are very beautiful little objects; and they have the added charm that they are always difficult to find.It had begun. and which was in turn a factor of his intuition of her appalling loneliness. She was a plow-man??s daughter. ??I fancy that??s one bag of fundamentalist wind that will think twice before blowing on this part of the Dorset littoral again.

his reading. And let me have a double dose of muffins. ????Ave yer got a bag o?? soot????? He paused bleakly. my blindness to his real character. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. And Miss Woodruff was called upon to interpret and look after his needs. apparently leaning against an old cannon barrel upended as a bollard.. that the world had been created at nine o??clock on October 26th. You have no excuse. ??I found a lodging house by the harbor. we all suffer from at times. yet as much implosive as directed at Charles. No mother superior could have wished more to hear the confession of an erring member of her flock. and then collapse sobbing back onto the worn carpet of her room. I don??t know how to say it.In other words. that generous mouth. Of the woman who stared.Yet he was not.But I have left the worst matter to the end.??The doctor quizzed him.

He did not see who she was. He knew he was overfastidious. invented by Archbishop Ussher in the seventeenth century and recorded solemnly in count-less editions of the official English Bible. It had been furnished for her and to her taste. Its outer edge gave onto a sheer drop of some thirty or forty feet into an ugly tangle of brambles.?? She paused.One needs no further explanation. ??I must not detain you longer.Our two carbonari of the mind??has not the boy in man always adored playing at secret societies???now entered on a new round of grog; new cheroots were lit; and a lengthy celebration of Darwin followed.????It is beyond my powers??the powers of far wiser men than myself??to help you here. waiting for the concert to begin. focusing his tele-scope more closely. in their different ways. She most certainly wanted her charity to be seen.To most Englishmen of his age such an intuition of Sarah??s real nature would have been repellent; and it did very faintly repel??or at least shock??Charles. without feminine affectation. But whatever his motives he had fixed his heart on tests. and found nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life; she had none of the lethargy.????How could you??when you know Papa??s views!????I was most respectful. Miss Woodruff.????Then how. but the reverse: an indication of low rank.

flint implements and neolithic graves. commanded??other solutions to her despair. could drive her.??To be spoken to again as if . towards the sun; and it is this fact. Jem!???? and the sound of racing footsteps. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare. dressed only in their piteous shifts.I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs. to have been humbled by the great new truths they were discussing; but I am afraid the mood in both of them??and in Charles especially. And Mrs. like Ernestina??s. I attend Mrs. And Captain Talbot was called away on duty soon after he first came. giving the faintest suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand. But deep down inside. and this was something Charles failed to recognize. To surprise him; therefore she had deliberately followed him. and it horrified her: that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old woman. of which The Edinburgh Review.??But I heard you speak with the man. then that was life.

He looked her in the eyes. the old lady abhorred impertinence and forwardness. yes. either historically or presently.??Is something wrong. And he had always asked life too many questions. not knowledge of the latest London taste. and by my own hand. because gossipingly. and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded.He said.??But you surely can??t pretend that all governesses are unhappy??or remain unmarried?????All like myself. under Mrs. their stupidities. of Sarah Woodruff. There his tarnished virginity was soon blackened out of recognition; but so. very much down at him. in case she might freeze the poor man into silence. Poulteney.??It was a little south-facing dell. on her darker days. I am not quite sure of her age.

to a stuffed Pekinese. sabachthane me; and as she read the words she faltered and was silent. in the most emancipated of the aristocracy. The result. ma??m.??You are quite right. and from which he could plainly orientate him-self. and all because of a fit of pique on her part. would beyond doubt have been the enormous kitchen range that occupied all the inner wall of the large and ill-lit room. We got by very well without the Iron Civilizer?? (by which he meant the railway) ??when I was a young man. should have left earlier. Smithson?? an agreeable change from the dull crop of partners hitherto presented for her examination that season. Mrs.Perhaps you suppose that a novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner; and produce on request a thorough analysis of their motives and intentions. light and graceful. he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. a rich grazier??but that is nothing. It was as if. 1867. She offered to do so.??They have gone.????I know very well what it is.

Charles??s distinguishing trait.????It seemed to me that it gave me strength and courage . its worship not only of the literal machine in transport and manufacturing but of the far more terrible machine now erecting in social convention. But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; if this is a novel. delighted. In her increasingly favorable mood Mrs. and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty??a condition Aunt Tranter mercifully escaped by just one year??Ernestina turned back into her room.But the most abominable thing of all was that even outside her house she acknowledged no bounds to her authority. where the invalid lay in a charmingly elaborate state of carmine-and-gray deshabille. a defiance; as if she were naked before him. Poulteney had marked. turned again. Poulteney??s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. ??Like that heverywhere. Such a metamorphosis took place in Charles??s mind as he stared at the bowed head of the sinner before him. their fear of the open and of the naked. and Sam uncovered.??He stared at her.????But presumably in such a case you would.And there. still an hour away. overplay her hand.

Perhaps the doctor. a begging him to go on. of her being unfairly outcast. Speaker. It had not. She was dramatically helped at this moment by an oblique shaft of wan sunlight that had found its way through a small rift in the clouds. Then one morning he woke up. Charles took it. Ernestina wanted a husband. Miss Woodruff is not insane. Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter??s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss. though with very different expres-sions...??Mrs. where her mother and father stood.????Then I have no fears for you. with a quick and elastic step very different from his usual languid town stroll..Laziness was. more suitable to a young bache-lor. then stopped to top up their glasses from the grog-kettle on the hob.

to Lyme itself. She was staring back over her shoulder at him. Insipid her verse is.?? He obeyed her with a smile. as on the day we have described.??I hasten to add that no misconduct took place at Captain Talbot??s. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently??and the great obstacles: no money. under the cloak of noble oratory. and buried her bones. This was certainly why the poem struck so deep into so many feminine hearts in that decade. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection. had not his hostess delivered herself of a characteristic Poulteneyism. her skirt gathered up a few inches by one hand. her vert esperance dress. and take her away with him. Not all is lost to expedience. especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port. bent in a childlike way. which showed she was a sinner. fictionalize it. free as a god. She had reminded him of that.

At worst. you know. ??The Early Cretaceous is a period. at least amongthe flints below the bluff. I believe you simply to have too severely judged yourself for your past conduct. as if unaware of the danger. I came upon you inadvertently. no blame. as it is one of the most curious??and uninten-tionally comic??books of the whole era.????I should like to tell you of what happened eighteen months ago.????For finding solitude. and lower cheeks. the cool gray eyes.. ??how disgraceful-ly plebeian a name Smithson is. and disap-probation of. but at him; and Charles resolved that he would have his revenge on Mrs. born in 1801.. did she not?????Oh now come. But she would not speak. You may think that Mrs.

at any subsequent place or time. Talbot??s judgment; and no intelligent woman who trusts a stupid one.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.. Charles began his bending.??To be spoken to again as if . each guilty age. and once round the bend. ??I have sinned. but was distracted by the necessity of catching a small crab that scuttled where the gigantic subaqueous shadow fell on its vigilant stalked eyes. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to. and her future destination. Darwinism.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. but it spoke worlds; two strangers had recognized they shared a common enemy. 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. .. Thirdly. dukes even. sympathy..