kept
up a spasmodic flow of low-toned remarks to him, whom of all men she
held in highest veneration.

His spiritual powers she rated far higher than those of the Parson, who
never fulminated from the pulpit till she felt the fear of hell melting
her bones within her. This the lawyer did, and managed at the same time
to make her feel herself a good woman, one of the saved, and the
piquancy of the double sensation was the hidden drug of Annie's life.
She dallied with thoughts of eternal suffering as a Flagellant with
imagings of torture, and when her mind was reeling at the very edge of
the pit she would pull herself back with a loud outcry on the Almighty,
followed by a collapse as sensuous in its utter laxity.

Annie would have been shocked if anyone had tried to force on her the
idea, that, in the unacknowledged warfare which enwrapped Ishmael,
Tonkin was on her side as against the child; but even she was dimly
aware that he and Boase, joint guardians as they were, stood in opposite
camps. But it was towards her, the respectable widow-woman, the owner,
but for Ishmael, of the biggest estate in all Penwith, that Tonkin's
current of consideration flowed, whereas hers, after her religion, was
perpetually set about Archelaus. He, the beautiful young man with the
round red neck and the white arms and the strong six feet of height,
whom she had made and given to the world, to him she would have given
the world and all the heavens had it been in her power. And, as things
were, she could not even give him Cloom Manor and its fruitful acres. Of
this impotency Archelaus was even more aware than usual as he sat beside
her and glowered down the table at his little brother.

Ishmael was still showing off, though less noisily, for he was feeling
very tired and sleepy; the unaccustomed cider and the heavy meal of
roast mutton, in a house where there was rarely any meat except
occasional rashers, were proving too potent for him. The room was
intensely hot, the prevailing notion of comfort being to shut every
window at night, and a large fire, before which the side of mutton had
been gravely twirling for hours, was only now beginning to subside. The
candles guttered and grew soft in the warmth, beads of moisture stood
out on the faces of the company, and the smell of incompletely-washed
bodies reminded the Parson of hot afternoons with his Sunday school.

Phoebe found Ishmael dull since his volubility had begun to desert
him, and