shuddered to think that he had virtually almost engaged himself to this girl.  Or, had he?  Was his honour bound?  Distance appeared to answer the question favourably.  There was safety in being distant from her.  She possessed an incomprehensible attractiveness.  She was at once powerful and pitiable:  so that while he feared her, and was running from her spell, he said, from time to time, “Poor little thing!” and deeply hoped she would not be unhappy.

A showman once (a novice in his art, or ambitious beyond the mark), after a successful exhibition of his dolls, handed them to the company, with the observation, “satisfy yourselves, ladies and gentlemen.”  The latter, having satisfied themselves that the capacity of the lower limbs was extraordinary, returned them, disenchanted.  That showman did ill.  But I am not imitating him.  I do not wait till after the performance, when it is too late to revive illusion.  To avoid having to drop the curtain, I choose to explain an act on which the story hinges, while it is advancing:  which is, in truth, an impulse of character.  Instead of his being more of a puppet, this hero is less wooden than he was.  Certainly I am much more in awe of him.

CHAPTER XIV

Mr. Pole was one of those men whose characters are read off at a glance.  He was neat, insignificant, and nervously cheerful; with the eyes of a bird, that let you into no interior.  His friends knew him thoroughly.  His daughters were never in doubt about him.  At the period of the purchase of Brookfield he had been excitable and feverish, but that was ascribed to the projected change in his habits, and the stern necessity for an occasional family intercommunication on the subject of money.  He had a remarkable shyness of this theme, and reversed its general treatment; for he would pay, but would not talk of it.  If it had to be discussed with the ladies, he puffed, and blinked, and looked so much like a culprit that, though they rather admired him for what seemed to them the germ of a sense delicate above his condition, they would have said of any man they had not known so perfectly, that he had painful reasons for wishing to avoid it.  Now that they spoke to him of Besworth, assuring him that they were serious in their desire to change their residence, the fit of shyness was manifested, first in outrageous praise of Brookfield, which was speedily and inexplicably followed by a sort of implied assent to the proposition to depart from it.  For Besworth displayed numerous advantages over Brookfield, and to contest one was to plunge headlong into the money question.  He ventured to ask his daughters what good they expected from the change.  They replied that it was simply this:  that one might live fifty years at Brookfield and not get such a circle as in two might be established at Besworth.  They were restricted.  They had gathering friends, and no means of bringing them together.  And the beauty of the site of Besworth made them enthusiastic.