encounter. This De Grantmesnil declined, avowing himself vanquished as much by the courtesy as by the address of his opponent.

Ralph de Vipont summed up the list of the stranger's triumphs, being hurled to the ground 5 with such force that the blood gushed from his nose and his mouth, and he was borne senseless from the lists.

The acclamations of thousands applauded the unanimous award of the prince and marshals 10 announcing that day's honours to the Disinherited Knight.

5

7. George Eliot (Marian Evans).

Born 1820. Died 1881.

FROM Silas Marner, CHAPTER XVIII.

[The selection is introduced to stand for the dramatic novel or, as it is sometimes called, the novel of character. The interest lies in human personality—not so much in the sketching of individuals, as in the action of one character upon another, not in the foibles of men, but in passion. Excellent examples of this kind of narrative are to be found in the novels of George Eliot, and nowhere are they more real than in Silas Marner (1861); in the earlier stories like the Scenes from Clerical Life, the drama is occasionally extravagant; in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda the plots often become cumbrous, and the genuine passion is too often crowded out by analysis. Other good examples of this kind of writing are to be found in Dickens, in Mr. Thomas Hardy, in Mr. George Meredith, especially in Richard Feveril, of which, says Stevenson, "the last interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril is pure drama; more than that it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English tongue." 1]

SOME one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy felt that it was her husband. She turned from the window with gladness in her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was stilled.

"Dear, I'm so thankful you're come," she said, going towards him. "I began to get❞—

She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down

A Gossip on Romance in Memories and Portraits (New York, 1894), p. 263.

his hat with trembling hands, and turned towards her with a pale face and a strange, unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as part of a scene invisible to herself. She laid her hand on his arm, not daring to speak again; but he left the touch unnoticed, 5 and threw himself into his chair.

Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep away, will you?" said Godfrey ; and when the door was closed again he exerted himself to speak more distinctly.

"Sit down, Nancy-there," he said, pointing to a chair opposite him. “I came back as soon as I could to hinder anybody's telling you but me. I've had a great shock-but I care most about the shock it'll be to you."

"It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips, clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.

ΙΟ

15

"No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate skill with which he would have wished 20 to make his revelation. "It's Dunstan―my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago. We've found him,--found his body-his skeleton."

The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in Nancy made her feel these words a relief. She sat in 25 comparative calmness to hear what else he had to tell. He went on:

"The stone pit has gone dry suddenly,-from the draining, I suppose; and there he lies-has lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great stones. 30 There's his watch and seals, and there's my goldhandled hunting whip, with my name on. He took it

away, without my knowing, the day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen.'

Godfrey paused; it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you think he drowned himself?" said 5 Nancy, almost wondering that her husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been augured.

"No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct Io voice, as if he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: “Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner."

The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and shame, for she had been bred up to regard 15 even a distant kinship with crime as a dishonour.

66

"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more keenly by her husband.

"There was money in the pit," he continued, "all 20 the weaver's money. Everything's been gathered up, and they're taking the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you. There was no hindering it; you must know."

He was silent, looking on the ground for two long 25 minutes. Nancy would have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she refrained, from an instinctive sense that there was something behind,— that Godfrey had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on 30 her, as he said:

"Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found

out. I've lived with a secret on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't have you know it by somebody else, and not by me-I wouldn't have you find it out after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been I will' and 'I won't' with me all my life; 5 I'll make sure of myself now."

་

Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife met with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection.

"Nancy," said Godfrey slowly, "when I married 10 you, I hid something from you,—something I ought to have told you. That woman Marner found dead in the snow-Eppie's mother-that wretched woman —was my wife; Eppie is my child.”

He paused, dreading the effects of his confession. 15 But Nancy sat quite still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her lap.

"You'll never think the same of me again,” said 20 Godfrey after a little while, with some tremor in his voice. She was silent.

"I oughtn't to have left the child unowned; I oughtn't to have kept it from you. But I couldn't bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led away into marrying 25 her; I suffered for it."

Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost expected that she would presently get up and say she would go to her father's. How could she have any mercy for faults that must seem so black to her, with 30 her simple, severe notions?

But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and