Reuben grumbled and muttered to himself as he crossed the thresholdsmall fry like these Jurys must[Pg 211] not be allowed to think that he had any time to spare. The young woman led him into the kitchen and offered him a seat. Reuben took it and crossed his legs, looking appraisingly round the room, which was poorly furnished, but beautifully kept, with some attempts at decoration. There was a print of Rossetti's "Annunciation" above the meal-chest, and a shelf of books by the fireplace. It all struck him as strange and rather contemptible. He remembered what he had been told about the Jurys, who had only just come to Cheat Land. Tom Jury had, so rumour said, kept a bookshop in Hastings, but trade had gone badly, and as his health demanded an outdoor life and country air, charitable friends had established him on a small holding. He had an invalid wife, and one daughter, who was not very strong eitheran ignoble family.
ONE:Where was he? He raised himself on his elbow, and immediately a head looked over the side of the cart."No, no, Harvey; his feet are not for the narrow limits of Gloucester. He is a bird of passage, that makes its periodical migrations, and cannot be called peculiar to one country more than another: in short, he is a kind of privileged outlaw."
THREE:"But, Master Calverley," said Black Jack, as the former abruptly rose to depart, "is my intelligence worth nothing, setting aside the actual loss I have sustained by sitting for four hours spending my money in this room, when I ought to have been fishing about for jobs?"
TWO:They were hungry ... their arms wound about each other and their faces pressed close, now cheek to cheek, now with lips fluttering together in those sweet kisses of youth which have so much of shyness in their passion.
TWO:"My Lord de Boteler," said Holgrave, drawing the child almost forcibly from Margaret, "as I hope that my mother is a saint in heaven, the child is yours. I was a bondmanwas motherlesschildlessand I thought it would be no crime to make you, too, desolate!"Tyler, in his haste to seize the archbishop, stumbled over a lance which one of those who had fled with the prelate had dropped.
"May be not, Margaret; but yet that lady who sat at her side, looked not so high as the baroness. There was more sweetness in her smile, and gentleness in her voice."They reached Odiam, both feeling that the glory of those last three months had departed. The sight of Boarzell, lying black and hullish across their path, had made them realise that their happiness was but an interval, an interlude between more significant, more sinister things. Naomi had lost her peace and confidence, she seemed to avoid her husband, was tongue-tied in his presence, gave him a hurried good night from the door. Reuben was silent and meditativewhen his eyes rested on Naomi they were half regretful.As they entered the dwelling, a child came running forward to meet its mother: Father John shrunk from the little one, as if its touch would have been pollution, and approached the sick man. His dim eyes brightened as they fell upon the monk, and he strove to rise in his bed, but sank back on the pillow.
荣誉榜
THREE:"Was I more than man, that I could tell the traitor Calverley deceived me?" impatiently returned the baron, as he felt, though not choosing to acknowledge it, that he had done wrong when he insisted on the bondage.
THREE:"I do forgive you, indeed, as truly as I hope to be forgiven!" said Margaret, affectedand turning away, she left the cottage.Sometimes he would expostulate with her, and when[Pg 266] she met his expostulations with blandishments, he would feel himself yielding, and grow so furious that he would turn upon her in rage and indignation. Rose was not like Naomi; in her own words "she gave as good as she got," and once or twice, for the first time in his life, Reuben found himself in loud and vulgar altercation with a female. He had never before had a woman stand up to him, and the experience was humiliating.
