[The Short Works of George Meredith by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link book
The Short Works of George Meredith

CHAPTER V
10/16

Habitually to be anticipating the simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed fancy of their artlessness.
'You talk of Chloe to him ?' he said.
She answered.

'Yes, that I do.

And he does love her! I like to hear him.
He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.' She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the sex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feel timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he relinquished his place to Mr.Camwell, and proceeded to administer the probe to Caseldy.
That gentleman was communicatively candid.

Chloe had left him, and he related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play--he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemed it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished first to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.
For some similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise.

'And I had my reward,' he said, as if he had been the person principally to suffer through that abstinence.


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