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The Chaperon by Henry James
page 19 of 59 (32%)
surprise for her with her grandmother and her aunt. It was probably
aunt Julia who had sent for him; her grandmother wouldn't have done
it. It placed him immediately on their side, and Rose was almost as
disappointed at this as if she had not known it was quite where he
would naturally be. He had never paid her a special visit, but if
that was what he wished to do why shouldn't he have waited till she
should be under her mother's roof? She knew the reason, but she had
an angry prospect of enjoyment in making him express it. She liked
him enough, after all, if it were measured by the idea of what she
could make him do.

In Bertram Jay the elements were surprisingly mingled; you would have
gone astray, in reading him, if you had counted on finding the
complements of some of his qualities. He would not however have
struck you in the least as incomplete, for in every case in which you
didn't find the complement you would have found the contradiction.
He was in the Royal Engineers, and was tall, lean and high-
shouldered. He looked every inch a soldier, yet there were people
who considered that he had missed his vocation in not becoming a
parson. He took a public interest in the spiritual life of the army.
Other persons still, on closer observation, would have felt that his
most appropriate field was neither the army nor the church, but
simply the world--the social, successful, worldly world. If he had a
sword in one hand and a Bible in the other he had a Court Guide
concealed somewhere about his person. His profile was hard and
handsome, his eyes were both cold and kind, his dark straight hair
was imperturbably smooth and prematurely streaked with grey. There
was nothing in existence that he didn't take seriously. He had a
first-rate power of work and an ambition as minutely organised as a
German plan of invasion. His only real recreation was to go to
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