Wed, 10/17/2012 - 00:16 — davidchen1
Wed, 10/17/2012 - 00:15 — davidchen1
“But I will first assume that it was knowledge of your wife’s guilt which prompted your attack on me. I am well aware that she has declared herself innocent, and that her father supports her declaration. By the time you receive this letter (my injuries oblige me to allow myself a whole fortnight to write it in), I shall have taken measures which render further concealment unnecessary. Therefore, if my confession avail you aught, you have it here:— She is guilty: willingly guilty, remember, whatever she may say to the contrary. You may believe this, and believe all I write hereafter. Deception between us two is at an end.
“I have told you Margaret Sherwin is guilty. Why was she guilty?
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:59 — davidchen1
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:59 — davidchen1
To this Mr. Thorne surmised that the relationship could not be very distant. Mr. Arabin assured him that it was so distant that the families knew nothing of each other. Mr. Thorne laughed his gentle laugh at this and told Mr. Arabin that there was now existing no branch of his family separated from the parent stock at an earlier date than the reign of Elizabeth, and that therefore Mr. Arabin could not call himself distant. Mr. Arabin himself was quite clearly an Arabin of Uphill Stanton.
“But,” said the vicar, “Uphill Stanton has been sold to the De Greys and has been in their hands for the last fifty years.”
“And when it has been there one hundred and fifty, if it unluckily remain there so long,” said Mr.
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:58 — davidchen1
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:58 — davidchen1
For blood and lineage he himself had a most profound respect. He counted back his own ancestors to some period long antecedent to the Conquest and could tell you, if you would listen to him, how it had come to pass that they, like Cedric the Saxon, had been permitted to hold their own among the Norman barons. It was not, according to his showing, on account of any weak complaisance on the part of his family towards their Norman neighbours. Some Ealfried of Ullathorne once fortified his own castle and held out, not only that, but the then existing cathedral of Barchester also, against one Geoffrey De Burgh, in the time of King John; and Mr. Thorne possessed the whole history of the siege written on vellum and illuminated in a most costly manner.
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:58 — davidchen1
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:57 — davidchen1
“I have no doubt she will be well able to do so,” replied the lady; “to do that and many more wonderful things. I am quite sure that the priestess of St. Ewold, when she does come, won’t come empty-handed.”
Mr. Arabin, however, did not appear well inclined to enter into speculative expenses on such a chance as this, and therefore any material alterations in the house the cost of which could not fairly be made to lie at the door either of the ecclesiastical commissioners or of the estate of the late incumbent were tabooed. With this essential exception, the archdeacon ordered, suggested, and carried all points before him in a manner very much to his own satisfaction.
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:57 — davidchen1
Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:57 — davidchen1
Look here, it is just sixteen feet by fifteen; did any man ever hear of a dining-room of such proportions!” The archdeacon stepped the room long-ways and cross-ways with ponderous steps, as though a certain amount of ecclesiastical dignity could be imparted even to such an occupation as that by the manner of doing it. “Barely sixteen; you may call it a square.”
“It would do very well for a round table,” suggested the ex-warden.
Now there was something peculiarly unorthodox, in the archdeacon’s estimation, in the idea of a round table. He had always been accustomed to a goodly board of decent length, comfortably elongating itself according to the number of the guests, nearly black with perpetual rubbing, and as bright as a mirror.