The child's name was Piers; for Jerome happened at that
time to be studying old Langland's "Vision," with delight in the
brave singer, who so long ago cried for social justice--one of the
few in Christendom who held by the spirit of Christ.
He was now forty-five years old; he mourned the loss of his comrade,
a gentle, loving woman, whom, though she seldom understood his views
of life, his moods and his aims, he had held in affection and
esteem. For eight years he went his way alone; then, chancing to be
at a seaside place in the north of England, he made the acquaintance
of a mother and daughter who kept a circulating library, and in less
than six months the daughter became Mrs. Otway. Aged not quite
thirty, tall, graceful, with a long, pale face, distinguished by its
air of meditative refinement, this lady probably never made quite
clear to herself her motives in accepting the wooer of fifty-three,
whose life had passed in labours and experiences with which she
could feel nothing like true sympathy. Perhaps it was that she had
never before received offer of marriage; possibly Jerome's eloquent
dark eyes, of which the gleam was not yet dulled, seconded the
emotional language of his lips, and stirred her for the moment to
genuine feeling. For a few months they seemed tolerably mated, then
the inevitable divergence began to show itself. Jerome withdrew into
his reveries, became taciturn, absorbed himself at length in the
study of Dante; Mrs.
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