He was
about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and
displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to
recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come
from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about;
her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except
in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as
distinct and unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the
sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he
calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He
had summed up all this- the perversity of the impulse, which had
declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside,
and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the
more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in
the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no
more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good
fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has
abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his
friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not
discredited by irritating associations.
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