Yet hitherto she had not been a romantic girl. She had felt nothing irksome in her surroundings, had been content with these broad streets and platitudinous façades; her pulses had not stirred at contact with masculinity; life with the family had seemed pleasant, and the prospect of ultimate union with some good-natured nonentity like Pratt, a well-managed nursery, some humdrum babies, had not appeared repellent. She was not irregular either in thought or conduct. Indeed, she had inherited a fair portion of her father’s love of order; showing this characteristic in many ways, keeping her room very neat and tidy, liking, even when she was quite small, to have boxes and convenient places in which to keep her belongings, not leaving books on sofas or dropping her handkerchief on the stairs. Beyond the sensation of possessing latent powers and capabilities upon which there had been no call, there had not come to her herself the slightest indication of the likelihood of what was happening now. It was unexpected, miraculous. As though that Virginia creeper which was so neatly bound upon its wires from the wide area to the top of the ground floor windows of their house had been metamorphosed into an overwhelming growth, with tendrils strong enough to bind a man’s limbs, huge pulp-laden leaves, and blazing red tropical passion flowers.
They entered the Gardens by the small gate, and he plunged across the grass with her just at a point where a notice board was imploring people to keep on the paths. They walked away together under the trees, towards the water. It lay all aglow in the mellow sunlight.
When she came home a little more than an hour later she glanced at the outside of the house again. Home. It was not so much that it had changed, it had lost significance.
After dinner she went upstairs to the music-room, while her father was drawn by Mrs. Verinder into the room that they sometimes called her own. In there Mrs. Verinder told him, with a mere expression of regret and no preamble, that Emmeline had fallen in love with Dyke, the explorer.
“But, good heavens,” cried Mr. Verinder, “he’s a married man.”
Mrs. Verinder sat down. As a very broad generalisation, it might be said that there are two classes of people: those who spring to their feet when suddenly confronted with a grave crisis and those who sit down. Mrs. Verinder was of the sitting-down sort.