He did not take a chair,
and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began:
"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least
to me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my
manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set
'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care."
Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess
his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact
with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his
preliminaries alone were enough to distress her. "Yes, what is
it?" she said.
"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God
thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her
mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us
when the child was young, and the child became precious as the
apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For
her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who
had been kind as a mother to her.
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