Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her in my
lady’s eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature of another kind.
But they could not put me farther from her than I put myself when I set
my merits against hers. More than that. They could not put me, by
millions of fathoms, half so low beneath her as I put myself when in
imagination I took advantage of her noble trustfulness, took the fortune
that I knew she must possess in her own right, and left her to find
herself, in the zenith of her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty,
plodding me.
No! Worldliness should not enter here at any cost. If I had tried to
keep it out of other ground, how much harder was I bound to try to keep
it out from this sacred place!
But there was something daring in her broad, generous character, that
demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately and patiently
addressed. And many and many a bitter night (O, I found I could cry for
reasons not purely physical, at this pass of my life!) I took my course.
My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated the
accommodation of my pretty house. There was room in it for only one
pupil. He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very well connected,
but what is called a poor relation. His parents were dead. The charges
of his living and reading with me were defrayed by an uncle; and he and I
were to do our utmost together for three years towards qualifying him to
make his way. At this time he had entered into his second year with me.
He was well-looking, clever, energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best
sense of the term, a thorough young Anglo-Saxon.
I resolved to bring these two together.
NINTH CHAPTER
SAID I, one night, when I had conquered myself, ‘Mr. Granville,’—Mr.
Granville Wharton his name was,—‘I doubt if you have ever yet so much as
seen Miss Fareway.’
‘Well, sir,’ returned he, laughing, ‘you see her so much yourself, that
you hardly leave another fellow a chance of seeing her.’
‘I am her tutor, you know,’ said I.
And there the subject dropped for that time. But I so contrived as that
they should come together shortly afterwards. I had previously so
contrived as to keep them asunder; for while I loved her,—I mean before I
had determined on my sacrifice,—a lurking jealousy of Mr. Granville lay
within my unworthy breast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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