No amount of sponging would get the stains away from my horrid red eyelids.  I slunk into my seat at the breakfast-table, not knowing that one of the maids had dropped a letter from Charles into my hand, and that I had opened it and was holding it open.  The letter, as I found afterwards, told me that Charles has received an order from his uncle to go over to Mr. Pollingray’s estate in Dauphiny on business.  I am not sorry that they should have supposed I was silly enough to cry at the thought of Charles’s crossing the Channel.  They did imagine it, I know; for by and by Miss Pollingray whispered:  ’Les absents n’auront pas tort, cette fois, n’est-ce-pas?  ’And Mr. Pollingray was cruelly gentle:  an air of ‘I would not intrude on such emotions’; and I heightened their delusions as much as I could:  there was no other way of accounting for my pantomime face.  Why should he fancy I suffered so terribly?  He talked with an excited cheerfulness meant to relieve me, of course, but there was no justification for his deeming me a love-sick kind of woe-begone ballad girl.  It caused him likewise to adopt a manner—­what to call it, I cannot think:  tender respect, frigid regard, anything that accompanies and belongs to the pressure of your hand with the finger-tips.  He said goodbye so tenderly that I would have kissed his sleeve.  The effort to restrain myself made me like an icicle.  Oh! adieu, mon parrain!

     Etext editor’s bookmarks: 

     A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
     A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
     Gentleman in a good state of preservation
     Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
     In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
     Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
     Rapture of obliviousness
     Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
     When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her

THE SENTIMENTALISTS

AN UNFINISHED COMEDY

By George Meredith

Dramatis personae
Homeware. 
Professor spiral.

Arden,.............  In love with Astraea.

Swithin,...........  Sympathetics.  Osier,

Dame Dresden,......  Sister to Homeware.

Astraea,...........  Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.

Lyra,..............  A Wife. 
Lady Oldlace. 
Virginia. 
Winifred.

THE SENTIMENTALISTS

An unfinished comedy

The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer.  The paths are shaded by tall box-wood hedges.  The—­time is some sixty years ago.

Scene I

Professor spiral, dame Dresden, lady Oldlace,
Virginia, Winifred, Swithin, and osier