Orme

“ Kate Orme was not without an amused perception of her future husband’s point of view; but she could enter into it with the tolerance which allows for the inconscient element in all our judgments. There was, for instance, no one more sentimentally humane than Denis’s mother, the second Mrs. Peyton, a scented silvery person whose lavender silks and neutral-tinted manner expressed a mind with its blinds drawn down toward all the unpleasantness of life ”

“ Orme's feet, and hid her face in the skirt of Mrs. Orme's dress.
"My friend—my friend!" said Lady Mason.
"Yes, I am your friend—indeed I am. But, dear Lady Mason—" And she endeavoured to think of words by which she might implore her to rise and compose herself.
"How is it you can bear with such a one as I am? How is it that you do not hate me for my guilt?"
"He does not hate us when we are guilty."
"I do not know. Sometimes I think that all will hate me,—here and hereafter—except you. Lucius will hate me, and how shall I bear that? Oh, Mrs. Orme, I wish he knew it!" ”

“ Mason,' Mrs. Orme said at last, as she gave him her hand.
'Good-night. I believe that in my madness I spoke to you to-night like a brute.'
'No, no. It was nothing. I did not think of it.'
'When you think of how it was with me, you will forgive me.'
She pressed his hand and again told him that she had not thought of it. It was nothing. And indeed it had been as nothing to her. There may be moments in a man's life when any words may be forgiven, even though they be spoken to a woman. ”

“ There could be no possible reason why Peregrine Orme should not win and wear the beautiful girl whom he so much admired.
But the ghosts are kept standing over their flames, the spirit is becoming exhausted, and the raisins will be burnt. At snap-dragon, too, the ghosts here had something to do. The law of the game is this—a law on which Marian would have insisted had not the flames been so very hot—that the raisins shall become the prey of those audacious marauders only who dare to face the presence of the ghost, and to plunge their hands into the burning dish. ”

“ Orme had left the topic, Kate remained lost in its contemplation. She had begun to perceive that the fair surface of life was honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage. Every respectable household had its special arrangements for the private disposal of family scandals ”

“ Orme stood at the back of Lady Mason's chair with her hand on Lady Mason's shoulder. "Shall I go now, dear?" said Mrs. Orme.
"No; stay a moment; not yet. Oh, Mrs. Orme!"
"You will find that you will be stronger and better able to bear it when it has been done."
"Stronger! Why should I wish to be stronger? How will he bear it?"
"It will be a blow to him, of course."
"It will strike him to the ground, Mrs. Orme. I shall have murdered him. I do not think that he will live when he knows that he is so disgraced."
"He is a man, and will bear it as a man should do. ”

“ But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded herself to happiness, letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rain soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made it so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two months—since her engagement to Denis Peyton—no distinct addition to the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed, of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged ”

“ Such had been the question which Sir Peregrine Orme had asked himself over and over again, in these latter days, since Lady Mason had been staying at his house; and the purport of the question was this:—Why should he not make Lady Mason his wife?
I and my readers can probably see very many reasons why he should not do so; but then we are not in love with Lady Mason. Her charms and her sorrows,—her soft, sad smile and her more lovely tears have not operated upon us. We are not chivalrous old gentlemen, past seventy years of age, but still alive, keenly alive, to a strong feeling of romance. ”

“ I think it would be better for her, Miss Furnival, to be staying at home with me, than to be at The Cleeve."
"The kindness of Mrs. Orme must be a great support to her."
"And why should not my kindness be a support to her,—or rather my affection? We know from whom all these scandals come. My desire is to meet that man in a court of law and thrust these falsehoods down his throat."
"Ah! but you are a man."
"And therefore I would take the burden from her shoulders. But no; she will not trust to me. The truth, Miss Furnival, is this, that she has not yet learned to think of me as a man. ”

“ When a man does so after thirty he forgets the spots which he passes in his hurry, but when he does so before twenty he never forgets. That field and that wood Peregrine Orme would never forget. There was the double ditch and bank over which Harriet Tristram had ridden with so much skill and courage. There was the spot on which he had knelt so long, while Felix Graham lay back against him, feeble and almost speechless. And there, on the other side, had sat Madeline on her horse, pale with anxiety but yet eager with hope, as she asked question after question as to him who had been hurt. ”

“ I have already met the Marquis de St. Brie and spoken to him, without noticing his attempt upon my life."
"You did right, De l'Orme," replied the count, his brow knitting into a sterner frown than I had ever seen him assume. "But if he has the insolence to present himself before me, my conduct must be very different. In addition to this attempt upon you, he is known to have been the murderer of the Count de Bagnols, and strongly suspected of having poisoned poor De Valençais. My own honour and dignity require me to have no communion with such a man, let his rank and influence be what it may. ”

“ He would have been a greater man had he possessed the power to bear up against all this, and to go forth to the world bearing his burden bravely on his shoulders. But Sir Peregrine Orme was not a great man, and possessed few or none of the elements of greatness. He was a man of a singularly pure mind, and endowed with a strong feeling of chivalry. It had been everything to him to be spoken of by the world as a man free from reproach,—who had lived with clean hands and with clean people around him. ”

“ When I thought over the easy flowing conversation which had passed between me and that very man, his unbent brow, his calm philosophising air, and compared the whole with the iron expression of the countenance before me, I could scarcely believe it had been aught but a dream.
"Well, Sir Count de l'Orme," said he, in a deep hollow tone of voice, "you have chosen your party. You have abandoned an honourable path that was open to you. Of your own free-will you attached yourself to treason and to traitors, and you now taste the consequences." ”

“ High above earth's habitations, nothing looked upon us but the clear blue sky and the bright calm moon, whose beams fell soft and silvery upon the tall mountain peaks around--poured into every valley--danced in every stream, and contrasted the broad, deep shadows thrown by each projecting rock, with the bright effulgence of those spots whereon she glowed with her full power. ”

“ It is only in so far as such ingenuity is accompanied by a genuine artistic sense that a fine work of art can be produced. De l'Orme undoubtedly worked with a steady regard for what he considered artistic design, but his works show, I think, that he was devoid of true artistic genius. ”

“ In this world there is nothing left for us. But there is another world before you,—if you can repent of your sin.' This too he said very sternly, standing somewhat away from her, and frowning the while with those gloomy eyebrows. Sad as was her condition he might have given her solace, could he have taken her by the hand and kissed her. Peregrine Orme would have done so, or Augustus Staveley, could it have been possible that they should have found themselves in that position. Though Lucius Mason could not do so, he was not less just than they, and, it may be, not less loving in his heart. ”

“ The gruesome gross and obvious might be charmless enough; but why should n’t one, with ingenuity, almost infinitely refine upon it? – as one was prone at any time to refine almost on anything? The study of certain of the situations that keep, as we say, the heart in the mouth might renew itself under this star; and in the recital in question, as in The friends of the friends, The jolly corner and The real right thing, the pursuit of such verily leads us into rarefied air. Two sources of effect must have seemed to me happy for Sir Edmund Orme ”

“ The Orpine was a flower linked with tradition and mystery in England, there were scores of fanciful notions connected with it. It has grown to be a spreading weed in some parts of New England, but it has lost both its mystery and its flowers. The only bed of flowering Orpine I ever saw in America was in the millyard of Miller Rose at Kettle Hole—and a really lovely expanse of bloom it was, broken only by old worn millstones which formed the doorsteps. ”

“ Mason, I am not going to tell you. I feel for you, I do upon my word. I feel for you, and I pity you." Mr. Dockwrath as he thus expressed his commiseration was sitting with his high chair tilted back, with his knees against the edge of his desk, with his hat almost down upon his nose as he looked at his visitors from under it, and he amused himself by cutting up a quill pen into small pieces with his penknife. It was not pleasant to be pitied by such a man as that, and so Peregrine Orme conceived.
"Sir, that is nonsense," said Lucius. "I require no pity from you or from any man." ”

“ The wise benevolence of Ormusd formed man capable of virtue, and abundantly provided his fair habitation with the materials of happiness. By his vigilant providence, the motion of the planets, the order of the seasons, and the temperate mixture of the elements are preserved. ”

“ The gigantic rocks and precipices, the profuse vegetation, the peculiar lustrous atmosphere of the mountains, the thousand rare and lovely flowers with which every spot of soil was carpeted and every rock adorned, the very butterflies which, fluttering about in thousands, seemed like flying blossoms ”

“ Ores are never found in regular strata, like the different kinds of earth; but in places which have formerly been cavities, running in all directions, with respect to the regular strata, and commonly called veins. ”

“ However, there was an air of calm tranquillity in that little village and its group of trees, raised up upon the soft green hill, and standing clear and defined in the pure sunshiny sky, which formed a strange mild contrast with the distant roar that the wind bore in sullen gusts from Lerida. There is a latent moral in every look of nature's face, which--did man but study it--would prove a great corrector of the heart ”

“ Ores sometimes occur, like coal, in layers or beds, running parallel with the strata of the inclosing rocks, or in prodigious irregular masses. Most commonly, however, they are found in veins traversing the rocks in every conceivable direction, and filling the crevices and chasms which former terrestrial revolutions have rent in the hard stone. ”

“ Round about, the mountains rose up on every side, seeming to shelter it from a world, and not a breath of wind rippled the surface of the water, so that the reflections of the high snowy peaks of the hills above, the dark rocks that dipped themselves in its waves, and the gloomy pines that skirted it to the east, were all seen looking up like ghosts from below, while ever and anon a light evening cloud skimming over the sky found there its reflection too, and was seen gliding over the bosom of the calm expanse. ”

“ But at this time, when the English settlements seemed on the point of emerging from continued difficulties to a state of prosperity, the erection of a new East India company, in opposition to the old, renewed all their former evils. The new company established their factory at Hughley, and the competition between the respective agents was carried on with the same animosity as exasperated their principals in England, which exposed the concerns of both to the impositions of the Nabob, and of the merchants of Bengal, who took every advantage of this rivality. ”

“ The presidency of Madrass, after the retreat of their army from Velore, had had no provocations worthy the contest, to induce them to engage in any military operations in the Carnatic, at the risque of drawing the French again into the field; and the government of Pondicherry, conducting themselves by intelligence, of winch the English were ignorant, were equally averse to venture any hostilities that might diminish their means of maintaining the advantages they had acquired in the Decan, which from their former security were at this time approaching to the utmost risque and uncertainty. ”

“ Mr. Lally believed this feigned intention to be real, and immediately retreated to his former stations; a few of the English cavalry and Sepoys were wounded. In the evening the Mysoreans arrived from Trivadi with 3000 bullocks, carrying their baggage, and drawing their artillery, and 3000 more laden with rice, and other provisions; the French detachments from Thiagar and Gingee accompanied them: they came in unmolested, as before, by Ariancopang, and their arrival was complimented with a long salute of cannon. ”