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The Egoist by George Meredith
page 69 of 777 (08%)
scholars by postponements of the ceremony and a prolongation of a
father's worries.

"Oh, the common meaning, papa," she said, seeing how it was with him.

"Ah!" said he, nodding and blinking gradually back to a state of
composure, glad to be appeased on any terms; for mutability is but
another name for the sex, and it is the enemy of the scholar.

She suggested that two weeks of Patterne would offer plenty of time to
inspect the empty houses of the district, and should be sufficient,
considering the claims of friends, and the necessity of going the round
of London shops.

"Two or three weeks," he agreed, hurriedly, by way of compromise with
that fearful prospect.



CHAPTER VII

THE BETROTHED

During the drive from Upton to Patterne, Miss Middleton hoped, she
partly believed, that there was to be a change in Sir Willoughby's
manner of courtship. He had been so different a wooer. She remembered
with some half-conscious desperation of fervour what she had thought of
him at his first approaches, and in accepting him. Had she seen him
with the eyes of the world, thinking they were her own? That look of
his, the look of "indignant contentment", had then been a most noble
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