The Man in Possession — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. been to him, he, on the other hand, had not been recognised by her. An ordinary young man might have been less deli- cate, and drawn himself forcibly back to her memory. An ordinary young man, too, might have seen in that episode of the kitchen only an opportunity to flirt, or ‘ chaff,” or talk nonsense, but Tom Rivers was not all an ordinary young man. With all his light- heartedness and ‘‘ want of proper pride,” as his mother termed it, there was a good deal of romance in his nature and a great reverence for the ideal woman at whose feet he would one day lay his heart. The Ideal Woman had never yet looked at him out of the eyes of society belles, or the marriageable young ladies of Mayfair, or the less pretentious but equally zealous fortune-hunters of Bayswater and Bloomsbury. He had met them all, had danced with them, dined with them, ‘‘tennised ” with them, boated with them, ‘‘afternoon-tead” with them, and yet came out of the ordeal perfectly heart-whole. Yet here he was in an utterly irrational manner going down on his knees ata moment's notice, before a girl of whom he knew nothing except that she was of Irish descent, and lived in a house bare almost as ‘*Mother Hubbard's” famous cupboard, and with a bailiff on the premises, a drunken servant, and a sick father. Truly an ideal situation for a heroine of romance ! He laughed softly as he sat there smoking in the solitude of his bachelor chambers. If he could serve her, help her, win her gratitude. No, not COMicloe (Sri C(O)