the Truth.

He begged the countess to let him have the letter; he held to the
petition, with supplications; he spoke of his pledged word, his honour;
and her countenance did not deny to such an object as she beheld the
right to a sense of honour. 'We all have the sentiment, I hope, Mr.
Woodseer,' she said, stupefying the worshipper, who did not see it
manifested. There was a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common
grounds between them, accompanying the dead words. Mistress of the
letter, and the letter safe under lock, the admiral dead, she had not to
bestow a touch of her hand on his coatsleeve in declining to return it.
A face languidly and benevolently querulous was bent on him, when he, so
clever a man, resumed his very silly petition.

She was moon out of cloud at a change of the theme. Gower journeyed
to London without the letter, intoxicated, and conscious of poison;
enamoured of it, and straining for health. He had to reflect at the
journey's end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, neither a
thing observed nor a thing imagined; he was a troubled pool instead of a
flowing river.

The best help to health for him was a day in his father's house. We are
perpetually at our comparisons of ourselves with others; and they are
mostly profitless; but the man carrying his religious light, to light
the darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, as though the
heart of him ran a mountain water through the grimy region, plucked at
Gower with an envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too,
reproached him for being outshone. Apart from his philosophy, he stood
confessed a bankrupt; and it had dwindled to near extinction. Adoration
of a woman takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had only to
say sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by her! One has to say
worse in this case; for the words are, liar and traitor.

Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to his emulous respect
for the old man, below whom, and indeed below the roadway of ordinary
principles hedged with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight
of her lashed him. She made it her business or it was her pleasure to
go the rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting his poor people. She spoke
of the scenes she witnessed, and threw no stress on the wretchedness,
having only the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great
wretchedness bubbling over the place blunted her feeling of loss at
the word of Admiral Bal