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What Necessity Knows by Lily Dougall
page 120 of 550 (21%)
school, had been greatly improved since it had come under his hand, and
the disinterestedness of his unpaid ministrations was greatly lauded. He
was a very busy, and a successful, man, much esteemed by all who knew
him. The New College was expected to become a university; Robert
Trenholme hoped for this and expected to remain at its head, but this
hope of his was by the way; he did not think of it often, for he loved
work for its own sake. Even the value he set on his present success was
not often, more actively in his mind than the value he set on the fresh
air he breathed. It was very occasionally that the pride of him came to
the surface, and then chiefly when animated by the memory of the time
when he had been at a disadvantage in worldly things. Such memories came
to him when he prepared to go to the railway station to meet the
Rexfords. He concealed it perfectly, but it gave him certain swellings
of heart to think that Miss Rexford would now gradually see all to which
he had attained.

When Captain Rexford had decided upon buying a farm at Chellaston, he
had had some correspondence with Principal Trenholme on the subject,
having been put into communication with him by the widow of the relative
at whose house Sophia and Trenholme had first met. This was the whole
extent of the acquaintance. Of Sophia's step-mother and her numerous
children Robert Trenholme knew nothing, save that a second family
existed. Nor did Captain Rexford imagine that his eldest daughter had
any distinct remembrance of a man whom she had so casually known.
Fathers are apt to assume that they know the precise extent of their
daughters' acquaintanceships, for the same reason that most people
assume that what they never heard of does not exist. Yet when Trenholme
actually repaired to the station at the hour at which Captain Rexford
had announced his arrival, it was a fact that many of his leisure
thoughts for a month back had been pointing forward, like so many
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