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Updated: May 15, 2025
To be sure, she might still have cut the knot in a summary feminine way; might have said "No" abruptly to Julia Trench and her curate, and, after all, have bestowed Skelmersdale, like any other prize or reward of virtue, upon her nephew Frank a step which Miss Dora Wentworth would have concluded upon at once without any hesitation.
Under all the circumstances, however, it may well be supposed that it was rather hard upon Mr Wentworth to recollect that he had engaged to return to luncheon with the Squire, and to prepare himself after this momentous morning's work, to face all the complications of the family, where still Skelmersdale and Wentworth were hanging in the balance, and where the minds of his kith and kin were already too full of excitement to leave much room for another event.
Still he perceived that it is no excuse for a man that he has been taken by surprise. Surprises in one's own conduct ought not to happen. When they do happen then an aristocrat ought to stick to what he had done. He was now in a subtle and complicated relationship to Mrs. Skelmersdale, a relationship in which her pride had become suddenly a matter of tremendous importance.
Skelmersdale. Who had in fact an effect of really never having been out of the room. But now he became penitent about her. His penitence expanded until it was on a nightmare scale. At last it blotted out the heavens. He felt like one of those unfortunate victims of religious mania who are convinced they have committed the Sin against the Holy Ghost. That was the key to it.
Skelmersdale, "just who she was, and where she lived, and everything about her. I sort of felt I 'ad to all the time, I did." "'Whatever you want you shall have, said the Fairy Lady. 'That's as good as done. You SHALL feel you have the money just as you wish. And now, you know YOU MUST KISS ME." And Mr. Skelmersdale pretended not to hear the latter part of her remark, and said she was very kind.
Skelmersdale, a very pretty little widow with hazel eyes, black hair, a mobile mouth, and a pathetic history, who talked of old music to him and took him to a Dolmetsch concert in Clifford's Inn, and expanded that common interest to a general participation in his indefinite outlook.
Like an insidious pedlar, that old rascal whom young literary gentlemen call the Great God Pan, began to spread his wares in the young man's memory.... After long and feverish wanderings of the mind, and some talking to himself and walking about the room, he did at last get a little away from Mrs. Skelmersdale.
But in another meeting or so the basis of confidence was complete; and from first to last I think I got most of the items and aspects indeed, I got quite a number of times over almost everything that Mr. Skelmersdale, with his very limited powers of narration, will ever be able to tell. And so I come to the story of his adventure, and I piece it all together again.
Perhaps, on the whole, he was not sorry that Skelmersdale was destined otherwise, and that Huxtable had been spoken to about Wentworth Rectory; for, of course, Frank would have plunged into marriage at once if he had been possessed of anything to marry on; and it looked providential under the circumstances, as the Squire argued with himself privately, that at such a crisis the Perpetual Curate should have fallen between two stools of possible preferment, and should still be obliged to content himself with St Roque's.
Miss Leonora's distinct intimation that Skelmersdale had passed out of the region of probabilities, had indeed tingled through him at the moment it was uttered; but just now he was going to see Lucy, anticipating with impatience the moment of coming into her presence, and nothing in the world could have dismayed him utterly.
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