Sublime

Charles Dickens

That Anne should herself be noticed she felt to be astounding, and she’d received Lorna’s first attention with a confused shyness that looked aloof.

paths should cross at certain times on certain days. That they’d become friends seemed to her both natural and miraculous. From the minute she’d seen him blinking behind the hard dark ranks of Bethesda’s pews, she’d felt he belonged to her: evidently God had ordained the whole business.

‘She was the wife of John Bell, who owned Lowlands until his death in 1889, and we’ve never known anything more about her: it’s as if she’s been cut out of time. We have records of their marriage, but not of her death; we have no portraits of her anywhere, and when the house and contents were sold none of her possessions were listed in the

Abruptly, and with unwelcome compassion for a woman he’d despised so cheerfully and for so long, he understood what loneliness had compelled Lorna to Bethesda’s door, and to all the church doors after it – recognised, in fact, her capacity to modify herself to please her company. Wasn’t he a different man to different men? It was among the least of