To win her he
would have given all his wealth, ay, thrice over, if that were possible.
To win her, to know her his by right and his alone, ah, that would be
heaven! His blood quivered and his mind grew dim when he thought of it.
What would it be to see her standing by him as she stood now, and know
that she was his wife! There is no form of passion more terrible than
this. Its very earthiness makes it awful.
The service went on. At last Mr. Granger mounted the pulpit and began
to read his sermon, of which the text was, "But the greatest of these is
charity." Geoffrey noticed that he bungled over some of the words,
then suddenly remembered Beatrice had told him that she had written the
sermon, and was all attention. He was not disappointed. Notwithstanding
Mr. Granger's infamous reading, and his habit of dropping his voice at
the end of a sentence, instead of raising it, the beauty of the thoughts
and diction was very evident. It was indeed a discourse that might
equally well have been delivered in a Mahomedan or a Buddhist place of
worship; there was nothing distinctively Christian about it, it merely
appealed to the good in human nature.
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