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Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865

"Ruth"

Bradshaw did and said; and this made it all the more
strange that he should wince so for Jemima, whenever anything
took place which he instinctively knew that she would dislike.
After an evening at Mr. Bradshaw's, when Jemima had gone to the
very verge of questioning or disputing some of her father's
severe judgments, Mr. Farquhar went home in a dissatisfied,
restless state of mind, which he was almost afraid to analyse. He
admired the inflexible integrity--and almost the pomp of
principle--evinced by Mr. Bradshaw on every occasion; he wondered
how it was that Jemima could not see how grand a life might be,
whose every action was shaped in obedience to some eternal law;
instead of which, he was afraid she rebelled against every law,
and was only guided by impulse. Mr. Farquhar had been taught to
dread impulses as promptings of the devil. Sometimes, if he tried
to present her father's opinion before her in another form, so as
to bring himself and her rather more into that state of agreement
he longed for, she flashed out upon him with the indignation of
difference that she dared not show to, or before, her father, as
if she had some diviner instinct which taught her more truly than
they knew, with all their experience; at least, in her first
expressions there seemed something good and fine; but opposition
made her angry and irritable, and the arguments which he was
constantly provoking (whenever he was with her in her father's
absence) frequently ended in some vehemence of expression on her
part that offended Mr.


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