Christian fiction; Scotland -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell the
truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had to remind
himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it was the work
given him to do, and to take more and more frequently the strengthening
cordial of a glance across the shop at his daughter. Such a glance
passed through the dusky place like summer lightning through a heavy
atmosphere, and came to Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a
world within and beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where
struggled no antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was
the visible garment of truth.
The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such a man
be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull?--To this I reply
that Marston's greatness had yet a certain repressive power upon the
man who despised him, so that he never uttered his worst thoughts or
revealed his worst basenesses in his presence. Marston never thought of
him as my reader must soon think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor
John was gradually improving, coming to see things more and more as he
would have him look on them. Add to this, that they had been in the
business together almost from boyhood, and much will be explained.
An open carriage, with a pair of showy but ill-matched horses, looking
unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park on the other,
drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest ran from end to end
of the shop, swaying as well those outside as those inside the counter,
for the carriage was well known in Testbridge. It was that of Lady
Margaret Mortimer; she did not herself like the _Margaret_, and signed
only her second name _Alice_ at full length, whence her _friends_
generally called her to each other Lady Malice. She did not leave the
carriage, but continued to recline motionless in it, at an angle of
forty-five degrees, wrapped in furs, for the day was cloudy and cold,
her pale handsome face looking inexpressibly more indifferent in its
regard of earth and sky and the goings of men, than that of a corpse
whose gaze is only on the inside of the coffin-lid. But the two ladies
who were with her got down. One of them was her daughter, Hesper by
name, who, from the dull, cloudy atmosphere that filled the doorway,
entered the shop like a gleam of sunshine, dusky-golden, followed by a
glowing shadow, in the person of her cousin, Miss Yolland.
Turnbull hurried to meet them, bowing profoundly, and looking very much
like Issachar between the chairs he carried. But they turned aside to
where Mary stood, and in a few minutes the counter was covered with
various stuffs for some of the smaller articles of ladies' attire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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