Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- General Editors’ Preface
- General Chronology of James’s Life and Writings
- Introduction
- Textual Introduction
- Chronology of Composition and Production
- Bibliography
- The Outcry
- Book First
- Book Second
- Book Third
- Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases
- Notes
- Textual Variants
- Emendations
- Appendices
IX
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- General Editors’ Preface
- General Chronology of James’s Life and Writings
- Introduction
- Textual Introduction
- Chronology of Composition and Production
- Bibliography
- The Outcry
- Book First
- Book Second
- Book Third
- Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases
- Notes
- Textual Variants
- Emendations
- Appendices
Summary
LORD THEIGN, when he had gone, revolved—it might have been nervously— about the place a little, but soon broke ground. “He’ll have told you, I understand, that I’ve promised to speak to you for him. But I understand also that he has found something to say for himself.”
“Yes, we talked—a while since,” the girl said. “At least he did.”
“Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.”
“Oh, he speaks very well—and I’ve never disliked him.”
It pulled her father up. “Is that all—when I think so much of him?”
She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone far; but she waited a little. “Do you think very, very much?”
“Surely I’ve made my good opinion clear to you!”
Again she had a pause. “Oh yes, I’ve seen you like him and believe in him—and I’ve found him pleasant and clever.”
“He has never had,” Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained, “what I call a real show.” But the character under discussion could after all be summed up without searching analysis. “I consider nevertheless that there's plenty in him.”
It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. “He strikes me as naturally quick and—well, nice. But I agree with you that he hasn't had a chance.”
“Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to one I dare say you’ll find your reward.”
For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her companion's manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped. Didn't he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn't his visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and indeed rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? “Do you desire it very particularly?” was, however, all she at last brought out.
“I should like it exceedingly—if you act from conviction. Then of course only; but of one thing I’m myself convinced—of what he thinks of yourself and feels for you.”
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- Information
- The Outcry , pp. 61 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016