One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
do forgive? So many things!’
‘You come from Cronidge to-day?’
‘From my family—to you.’
She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent
were explicable in a sentence. It had to be deferred.
Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict
undergone by him during the period of the silence between
them, he wondered at the vastness of the love which had
conquered objections, to him so poignant.
There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth
when looking on her face. Nor when thinking of the beauty
of her character, in absence or in presence, was there any. He
had mastered distaste to such a degree, that he forgot the
assistance he had received from the heiress for enabling him
to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is the imperious
requirement of superior station; and more money and more:
in these our modern days of the merchant’s wealth, and the
miner’s, and the gigantic American and Australian millionaires,
high rank is of necessity vowed, in peril of utter eclipse;
to the possession of money. Still it is, when assured, a consideration
far to the rear with a gentleman in whose bosom
love and the buzzing world have fought their battle out. He
could believe it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged
endurance of a contest lasting many days and nights; in the
midst of which, at one time, the task of writing to tell her of
his withdrawal from the engagement, was the cause of his
omission to write.
As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered
features, to repress an indicative dread of some intrepid
force behind it, that might be unfeminine, however gentle
the external lineaments. Her features, her present aristocratic
deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her character would
submit to moulding. Of all young ladies in the world, she
should be the one to shrink from a mental independence
and hold to the guidance of the man ennobling her. Did
she? Her eyes were reading him. She had her father’s limpid
eyes, and when they concentrated rays, they shot.
‘Have you seen my parents, Mr. Sowerby?’
He answered smilingly, for reassuringly: ‘I have seen them.’
‘My mother?’
‘From your mother first. But am I not to be Dudley?’
‘She spoke to you? She told you?’
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