But he had never yet felt the immediate presence of woman in any
of her closer relations. He had never known mother or sister; and,
although his voice always assumed a different tone and his manner
grew more gentle in the presence, of a woman, old or young, he
had found little individually attractive amongst the fisher girls.
There was not much in their circumstances to bring out the finer
influences of womankind in them: they had rough usage, hard work
at the curing and carrying of fish and the drying of nets, little
education, and but poor religious instruction. At the same time
any failure in what has come to be specially called virtue, was
all but unknown amongst them; and the profound faith in women, and
corresponding worship of everything essential to womanhood which
essentially belonged to a nature touched to fine issues, had as yet
met with no check. It had never come into Malcolm's thoughts that
there were live women capable of impurity. Mrs. Catanach was the
only woman he had ever looked upon with dislike--and that dislike
had generated no more than the vaguest suspicion. Let a woman's
faults be all that he had ever known in woman; he yet could look
on her with reverence--and the very heart of reverence is love,
whence it may be plainly seen that Malcolm's nature was at once
prepared for much delight, and exposed to much suffering. It followed
that all the women of his class loved and trusted him; and hence
in part it came that, absolutely free of arrogance, he was yet
confident in the presence of women.
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