Our friend in any case now
recognised--and it was as if at the recognition Mrs. Newsome's
fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin
and vague--that day after day he had been conscious in respect to
his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into
which he could at last read a meaning. It had been at the most,
this mystery, an obsession--oh an obsession agreeable; and it had
just now fallen into its place as at the touch of a spring. It had
represented the possibility between them of some communication
baffled by accident and delay--the possibility even of some
relation as yet unacknowledged.
There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett
years; but that--and it was what was strangest--had nothing
whatever in common with what was now in the air. As a child, as a
"bud," and then again as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed
for him, freely, in the almost incessantly open doorways of home;
where he remembered her as first very forward, as then very
backward--for he had carried on at one period, in Mrs. Newsome's
parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome's phases and his own!) a course of
English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas--and once more,
finally, as very much in advance.
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