With the family grouped about her, large-boned,
pompous, well-fed persons, impervious to general ideas as they were
imperviously prosperous, he compared her to a strayed deer amongst a
herd of store cattle. Really, with the exception of his cousin Felicia
and--naturally--of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true
to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle--for
didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in
their collective aspect?
Damaris' calm and immobility exceeded theirs. But in quality and source
how far removed, how sensitive and intelligent! Her mourning was in the
grand manner, too, her grief sincere and absolute to the extent of a
splendid self-forgetfulness. She didn't need to pose; for that forgotten
self could be trusted--in another acceptation of the phrase--never to
forget itself.
And here Tom Verity's agreeable frivolity, the astute and witty
shiftiness of mind and--in a degree--of practice, for which he so readily
found excuses and forgave himself, made place for nobler apprehensions.
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