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Michael's, the mother church in South Tredegar, had attained a new assistant rector whose zeal was not yet dulled by apathetic unresponsiveness on the part of the to-be-helped. Hence St. Michael's various missions flourished for the time, and once a month, if not oftener, the bell of St. John's sent its note abroad on the still morning air of Paradise.
So in South Tredegar, besprent now before the wondering eyes of a Thomas Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the pike after a sweeping summer storm.
Tredegar and Halford Gaines are certain to think it so. And that is why I said, just now, that it comes, in the end, to your choosing between us; taking them on experience or taking me on faith." She looked at him wistfully. "Of course I should expect to give up things.... You wouldn't want me to live here?" "I should not ask you to," he said, half-smiling.
Tredegar and the Halford Gaineses. They'll be here this evening, I suppose." They exchanged a discouraged glance, knowing how little difference the presence of the Halford Gaineses would make. "He wanted to know if there was no telegram from Amherst." "No." "Then they mean to begin." A nursemaid appeared in the doorway. "Miss Cicely " she said; and Justine bounded upstairs.
Westmore's withdrawal, and the two ladies, after an exchange of goodnights, left the men to their cigars. Mr. Langhope was the first to speak. "Bessy's as hopelessly vague about business as I am, Tredegar. Why the deuce Westmore left her everything outright but he was only a heedless boy himself." "Yes. The way he allowed things to go, it's a wonder there was anything to leave.
"Oh, I don't say it was a great passion but they got on perfectly," he corrected himself. "So perfectly that you must expect her to want a little storm and stress for a change. The mere fact that you and Mr. Tredegar objected to her seeing Mr. Amherst last night has roused the spirit of opposition in her. A year ago she hadn't any spirit of opposition."
"And you must understand that, if there is the faintest hint of this kind, I shall give up everything here, as soon as it can be settled legally God, how Tredegar will like the job! and you and I will have to go and begin life over again...somewhere else."
It was the wrong note, and he knew it; but he had been unable to conceal his sense of the vague current of opposition in the air. "Quite so: I believe she asked you to come," Mr. Tredegar assented, laying his hands together vertically, and surveying Amherst above the acute angle formed by his parched finger-tips.
"You don't know how far away anything like that seems when there is an ocean between. And I was hoping all the time that our homeland down here was escaping." "Escaping? You came through South Tredegar a little while ago; it is dead too dead to bury. You hear the sob of those blowing-engines? you will travel two hundred miles in the iron belt before you will hear it again.
Something in him some secret lurking element of weakness and evasion shrank out of sight in the light of her question: "Do you act on that?" and the "God forbid!" he had instantly flashed back to her. He turned to Mr. Tredegar with his answer. Amherst knew that any large theoretical exposition of the case would be as much wasted on the two men as on his wife.
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