Ebook Thomas Wingfold, Curate

She sat before the fire in a rather masculine posture. I would not willingly be rude, but the fact remains — a posture in which she would not, Ithink, have sat for her photograph — leaning back in a Chintz-covered easy chair, all the lines of direction about her parallel with the lines of the Chair, her arms lying on its arms, and the fingers of each hand folded down over the end of each arm — square, straight, right-angled — gazing into the fire, with something of the look of a sage, but one who has made no discovery. She had just finished the novel of the day, and was suffering a mild reaction — the milder, perhaps, that she was not altogether satisfied with the consummation. For the heroine bad, after much sorrow and patient en durance, at length married a man whom she could not help knowing to be not worth having. For the author even knew it, only such was his reading of life, and such his theory of artistic duty, that what it was a disappoint ment to Helen to peruse, it seemed to have been a com fort to him to write. Indeed her dissatisfaction went so far, that, although the fire kept burning away in per fect content before her, enhanced by the bellowing complaint of the wind in the chimney, she yet came nearer thinking than she had ever been in her life.