Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/166

 were, in a sense, his faults; but then an individual has no more right to discard his faults without due notice to his kinsfolk and acquaintance than to have his hair dyed or the conformation of his nose altered by a facial specialist. There are more than a few people whom it would be impossible to recognize without their faults.

The decorum which had replaced the former insouciance of Darius impressed me with a vague uneasiness. I seemed to detect, behind it, the omnipresent and all-powerful influence of Miss Berrith, that influence of which I had determined to rid myself and my surroundings. I know of nothing more disconcerting than the feeling that a person who is materially dependent upon you is really governed in the details of his conduct by the judgment of some one else. The implication that what you say or do is accepted, not as of necessity final, or even important, but simply as something to be referred to a superior intelligence