One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
attachment of the divergently meritorious couple, and a melancholy
reference to implacable obstacles in the principles
of each. The pair were offending the amatory corner in the
generous good sense of Nataly and Victor; they were not to
be hotly protected, though they were well enough liked for
their qualities, except by Lady Grace, who revelled in the
horrifying and scandalizing of Miss Graves. Such a specimen
of the Puritan middle English as Priscilla Graves, was
eastwind on her skin, nausea to her gorge. She wondered at
having drifted into the neighbourhood of a person resembling
in her repellent formal chill virtuousness a windy belfry
tower, down among those districts of suburban London
or appalling provincial towns passed now and then with a
shudder, where the funereal square bricks-up the Church,
that Arctic hen-mother sits on the square, and the moving
dead are summoned to their round of penitential exercise by
a monosyllabic tribulation-bell. Fenellan’s graphic sketch of
the teetotaller woman seeing her admirer pursued by
Eumenides flagons—abominations of emptiness—to the
banks of the black river of suicides, where the one most
wretched light is Inebriation’s nose; and of the vegetarian
violoncello’s horror at his vision of the long procession of the
flocks and herds into his lady’s melodious Ark of a mouth,
excited and delighted her antipathy. She was amused to transports
at the station, on hearing Mr. Barmby, in a voice all
ophicleide, remark: ‘No, I carry no instrument.’ The habitation
of it at the bottom of his trunk, was not forgotten when
it sounded.
Reclining in warmth on the deck of the vessel at night, she
said, just under Victor’s ear: ‘Where are those two?’
‘Bid me select the couple,’ said he.
She rejoined: ‘Silly man’; and sleepily gave him her hand
for good night, and so paralyzed his arm, that he had to
cover the continued junction by saying more than he intended:
‘If they come to an understanding!’
‘Plain enough on one side.’
‘You think it suitable?’
‘Perfection; and well-planned to let them discover it.’ ‘This
is really my favourite route; I love the saltwater and the night
on deck.’
‘Go on.’
‘How?’
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