Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Volume 1Meredith, George
General
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Volume 1
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
kind of woman's concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow be seen, think
what you may. The woman--lady--calling herself Lady Ormont,--poor woman,
I should do the same in her place,--she has a hard game to play; I have
to be for my family: she has manners, I'm told; holds herself properly.
She fancies she brings him up to the altar, in the end, by decent
behaviour. That's a delusion. It's creditable to her, only she can't
understand the claims of the family upon a man like my brother. When you
have spare time--'kick-ups,' he need to call it, writing to me from
school--come here; you're welcome, after three days' notice. I shall be
glad to see you again. You've gone some way to make a man of Leo."
He liked her well: he promised to come. She was a sinewy bite of the
gentle sex, but she had much flavour, and she gave nourishment.
"Let me have three days' notice," she repeated.
"Not less, Lady Charlotte," said he.
Weyburn received intimation from Arthur Abner of the likely day Lord
Ormont would appoint, and he left Olmer for London to hold himself in
readiness. Lady Charlotte and Leo drove him to meet the coach.
Philippa, so strangely baffled in her natural curiosity, begged for a
seat; she begged to be allowed to ride. Petitions were rejected. She
stood at the window seeing "Grandmama's tutor," as she named him, carried
off by grandmama. Her nature was avenged on her tyrant grandmama: it
brought up almost to her tongue thoughts which would have remained
subterranean, under control of her habit of mind, or the nursery's
modesty, if she had been less tyrannically treated. They were
subterranean thoughts, Nature's original, such as the sense of injustice
will rouse in young women; and they are better unstirred, for they ripen
girls over-rapidly when they are made to revolve near the surface. It
flashed on the girl why she had been treated tyrannically.
"Grandmama has good taste in tutors," was all that she said while the
thoughts rolled over.
CHAPTER IV.
RECOGNITION
Our applicant for the post of secretary entered the street of Lord
Ormont's London house, to present himself to his boyhood's hero by
appointment.
He was to see, perhaps to serve, the great soldier. Things had come to
this; and he thought it singular. But for the previous introduction to
Lady Charlotte, he would have thought it passing wonderful. He ascribed
it to the whirligig.
The young man was not yet of an age to gather knowledge of himself and of
life from his present experience of the fact, that passionate devotion to
an object strikes a vein through circumstances, as a travelling run of
flame darts the seeming haphazard zigzags to catch at the dry of dead
wood amid the damp; and when passion has become quiescent in the admirer,
there is often the unsubsided first impulsion carrying it on. He will
almost sorely embrace his idol with one or other of the senses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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