Free The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins Page A

with equal
certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in
the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth
can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn
sympathy between the creature and the creation around it, a reason
which may perhaps be found in the widely-differing destinies of
man and his earthly sphere. The grandest mountain prospect that
the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest
human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to
immortality.
    We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again passed
through the gates of Limmeridge House.
    On our way back I had let the ladies settle for themselves the
first point of view which they were to sketch, under my
instructions, on the afternoon of the next day. When they
withdrew to dress for dinner, and when I was alone again in my
little sitting-room, my spirits seemed to leave me on a sudden. I
felt ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself, I hardly knew why.
Perhaps I was now conscious for the first time of having enjoyed
our drive too much in the character of a guest, and too little in
the character of a drawing-master. Perhaps that strange sense of
something wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in myself, which had
perplexed me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me still.
Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner-hour called
me out of my solitude, and took me back to the society of the
ladies of the house.
    I was struck, on entering the drawing-room, by the curious
contrast, rather in material than in colour, of the dresses which
they now wore. While Mrs. Vesey and Miss Halcombe were richly
clad (each in the manner most becoming to her age), the first in
silver-grey, and the second in that delicate primrose-yellow
colour which matches so well with a dark complexion and black
hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost poorly dressed in
plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure: it was beautifully
put on; but still it was the sort of dress which the wife or
daughter of a poor man might have worn, and it made her, so far as
externals went, look less affluent in circumstances than her own
governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know more of Miss
Fairlie's character, I discovered that this curious contrast, on
the wrong side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and
natural intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of
her own wealth. Neither Mrs. Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever
induce her to let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies who
were poor, to lean to the side of the one lady who was rich.
    When the dinner was over we returned together to the drawing-room.
Although Mr. Fairlie (emulating the magnificent condescension of
the monarch who had picked up Titian's brush for him) had
instructed his butler to consult my wishes in relation to the wine
that I might prefer after dinner, I was resolute enough to resist
the temptation of sitting in solitary grandeur among bottles of my
own choosing, and sensible enough to ask the ladies' permission to
leave the table with them habitually, on the civilised foreign
plan, during the period of my residence at Limmeridge House.
    The drawing-room, to which we had now withdrawn for the rest of
the evening, was on the ground-floor, and was of the same shape
and size as the breakfast-room. Large glass doors at the lower
end opened on to a terrace, beautifully ornamented along its whole
length with a profusion of flowers. The soft, hazy twilight was
just shading leaf and blossom alike into harmony with its own
sober hues as we entered the room, and the sweet evening scent of
the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome through the open
glass doors. Good Mrs. Vesey (always the first of the party to
sit down) took possession of an arm-chair in a corner, and dozed
off comfortably to sleep. At my request Miss Fairlie placed
herself at the piano. As I followed her to a seat near the
instrument, I