Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/235

Rh you call taste, and not the sensibilities that you call opinions, is simply a lower, pettier sort of being—an insect that notices the shaking of the table, but never notices the thunder."

"Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me."

"No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your making a boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make it wicked that you should add one more to the women who hinder men's lives from having any nobleness in them."

Esther coloured deeply: she resented this speech, yet she disliked it less than many Felix had addressed to her.

"What is my horrible guilt?" she said, rising and standing, as she was wont, with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had been any one but Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to her that this attitude showed her to advantage; but she had only a mortified sense that he was quite indifferent to what others praised her for.

"Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?" he said, snatching up 'Réné,' and running his eye over the pages.