moreover be, wonderfully, the most appointed, the
most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection,
inasmuch as he would somehow wear the character
scientifically, ponderably, proveably not just loose
ly and sociably. Literally, furthermore, it wouldn't
really depend on herself, Sir Luke Strett's friend
ship, in the least; perhaps what made her most stam
mer and pant was its thus queerly coming over her
that she might find she had interested him even be
yond her intention, find she was in fact launched in
some current that would lose itself in the sea of sci
ence. At the same time that she struggled, however,
she also surrendered; there was a moment at which
she almost dropped the form of stating, of explain
ing, and threw herself, without violence, only with
a supreme pointless quaver that had turned, the next
instant, to an intensity of interrogative stillness,
upon his general goodwill. His large, settled face,
though firm, was not, as she had thought at first,
hard; he looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy,
half like a general and half like a bishop, and she
was soon sure that, within some such handsome
range, what it would show her would be what was
good, what was best for her. She had established,
in other words, in this time-saving way, a relation
with it; and the relation was the special trophy that,
for the hour, she bore off. It was like an absolute
possession, a new resource altogether, something
done up in the softest silk and tucked away under
the arm of memory. She hadn't had it when she

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p252 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p253w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p254

v?