He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow-
minion, at the chiselled profile of our goddess, and was not long before
he tried for a full-faced effect. Sanchia's eyes of clear amaze should
have cut him down, but they did not. His "Morning, Miss," was daily
reminder of a shared clay. Sanchia made herself inaccessible, and Mrs.
Benson agonised.
To apologise for her son had been as futile as to make excuses for death;
but she tried it. "You'll overlook the partiality of a mother, Miss
Percival? What am I to do? It's not that I want him to lap syrup from a
spoon--far from that. Idleness leads to impiety, and impiety anywhere,
from Tattersal's to the public, we all know. But think of what stings me.
I can't abide the thought that here am I, large Mrs. Benson, with money to
spare, turning my back upon my fatherless child. Yet nothing short of that
will do it." Sanchia readily excused her; and then she turned her own back
upon the Fulham Road. Pimlico found her a lodging, at the gates of whose
dingy mysteries were parks, Westminster, the sky and the river, eternal
things, making for tranquillity.
It had been her first impulse, the moment she reached London, to go to her
father, with whom alone she had corresponded during her years of exile.
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