"Oh, well!" she said
to herself presently.
She forced her mind back to the Quarterly article. It
was a beginning of just the kind of triumph that she
always had expected for him. He would soon be recognized
by scientific men all over the world as their confrere,
especially after his year's study at Oxford.
When George was in his cradle she had planned that he
should be a clergyman, just as she had planned that he
should be a well-bred man, and she had fitted him for
both roles in life, and urged him into them by the same
unceasing soft pats and pushes. She would be delighted
when she saw him in white robes serving at the altar.
Not that Frances had ever taken her religion quite
seriously. It was like her gowns, or her education, a
matter of course; a trustworthy, agreeable part of her.
She had never once in her life shuddered at a glimpse of
any vice in herself, or cried to God in agony, even to
grant her a wish.
But she knew that Robert Waldeaux's son would be
safer in the pulpit. He could take rank with scholars
there, too.
She inspected him now anxiously, trying to see him with
the eyes of these Oxford magnates. Nobody would guess
that he was only twenty-two. The bald spot on his crown
and the spectacles gave him a scholastic air, and the
finely cut features and a cold aloofness in his manner
spoke plainly, she thought, of his good descent and high
pursuits.
Frances herself had a drop of vagabond blood which found
comrades for her among every class and color.
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