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Updated: May 3, 2025
Miss Du Prel was greatly excited. It was so long since they had met, and it was so delightful to meet again. She had a hundred enquiries to make about common friends, and about the Professor's own doings. She forgot Temperley's name, and her introduction was vague. The Professor held out his hand cordially. Temperley was not allowed to feel an intrusive third.
Miss Du Prel says that this is only one side of me breaking out: that I am northern at heart. I think it is true, but meanwhile the thought of the South possesses me. I confess I think mother had some cause to be alarmed when she saw Miss Du Prel, if she wants to keep us in a chastened mood, at home. It seems as if all of me were in high carnival. Life is raised to a higher power.
"I like to fancy we are fugitives like Boccaccio's merry company from the plague of our daily prose, to this garden of sweet poetry!" cried Miss Du Prel. They all kindled at the idea. Valeria made some fanciful laws that she said were to govern the little realm. Everyone might express himself freely, and all that he said would be held as sacred, as if it were in confidence.
Hadria's attitude towards life had suggested to Miss Du Prel the idea of her heroine, Caterina. She remonstrated with Hadria, assuring her that no insult towards women was intended in the general scheme of society, and that it was a mistake to regard it in so resentful a spirit. "But that is just the most insulting thing about it," Hadria exclaimed.
"That's just what we have all noticed. There is so much animation in her face; she is such a sweet girl." Miss Du Prel, who was not of the stuff that martyrs are made of, muttered something incoherent and deserted her neighbour. She came up to the group that had gathered round Hadria. "Ah, Miss Du Prel," cried the latter, "I am so glad to see you at large again.
I don't know if you have all read the book? The heroine finds herself differing in her view of life from everyone round her. She is married, but she has made no secret of her scorn for the old ideals, and has announced that she has no intention of being bound by them." Mrs. Temperley glanced uneasily at Miss Du Prel. "Accordingly she does even as she had said," continued Lady Engleton.
"I pity Mr. Temperley, though I am so fond of Hadria," said Miss Du Prel. "If he shatters her illusions, she will certainly shatter his." The event that they had been expecting, took place. During one of the afternoon practices, when, for a few minutes, Mrs. Fullerton had left the room, Temperley startled Hadria by an extremely elegant proposal of marriage.
"Ah! if you could guess how I have longed to know you. I simply can't believe it." "And so my work has really given you pleasure?" "Pleasure! It has given me hope, it has given me courage, it has given me faith in all that is worth living for. It was an epoch in my life when I first read your Parthenia." Miss Du Prel seemed so genuinely pleased by this enthusiasm that Hadria was surprised.
Hadria said she did not believe it, or rather she believed that he was inordinately, tenderly, superlatively human, and that he had gone many steps farther in that direction than the rest of his generation. He was dowered with instincts and perceptions belonging to some kinder, nobler race than ours. Miss Du Prel looked grave.
"I have always looked up to her. Don't you know how painful it is when people you respect do things beneath them?" "Hadria will disappoint us all in some particular," said Miss Du Prel. "She will not correspond exactly to anybody's theory or standard, not even her own. It is a defect which gives her character a quality of the unexpected, that has for me, infinite attraction."
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