Grose.
"His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging
specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him
of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "They must do,
for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch."
It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face
how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote
struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing.
This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me.
"Surely you don't accuse HIM--"
"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me?
Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody."
Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage,
to her own place, "I must just wait," I wound up.
IX
I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed,
took something from my consternation. A very few of them,
in fact, passing, in constant sight of my pupils,
without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies
and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge.
I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary
childish grace as a thing I could actively cultivate,
and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself
to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I
can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my
new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater
tension still had it not been so frequently successful.
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