You must not think

You must not think, however, that the Poulteney con-tingent in Lyme objected merely to the frivolous architecture of the Assembly Rooms. It was what went on there that really outraged them. The place provoked whist, and gentle-men with cigars in their mouths, and balls, and concerts. In short, it encouraged pleasure,knockoff handbags; and Mrs. Poulteney and her kind knew very well that the only building a decent town could allow people to congregate in was a church. When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme, the heart was torn out of the town; and no one has yet succeeded in putting it back,replica gucci wallets.
Charles and his ladies were in the doomed building for a concert. It was not, of course—it being Lent—a secular concert. The programme was unrelievedly religious. Even that shocked the narrower-minded in Lyme, who professed, at least in public, a respect for Lent equal to that of the most orthodox Muslim for Ramadan. There were accordingly some empty seats before the fern-fringed dais at one end of the main room, where the concerts were held.
Our broader-minded three had come early, like most of the rest of the audience; for these concerts were really enjoyed—in true eighteenth-century style—as much for the company as for the music,UGG Clerance. It gave the ladies an excellent opportunity to assess and comment on their neighbors’ finery; and of course to show off their own. Even Ernestina, with all her contempt for the provinces, fell a victim to this vanity. At least here she knew she would have few rivals in the taste and luxury of her clothes; and the surreptitious glances at her little “plate” hat (no stuffy old bonnets for her) with its shamrock-and-white ribbons, her vert esperance dress, her mauve-and-black pelisse, her Balmoral boots, were an agree-able compensation for all the boredom inflicted at other times.
She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. Tranter’s com-mentary—places of residence, relatives,Discount UGG Boots, ancestry—with one ear, and to Tina’s sotto voce wickednesses with the other. The John-Bull-like lady over there, he learned from the aunt, was “Mrs. Tomkins, the kindest old soul, somewhat hard of hearing, that house above Elm House, her son is in India”; while another voice informed him tersely, “A perfect goose-berry.” According to Ernestina, there were far more goose-berries than humans patiently, because gossipingly, waiting for the concert to begin. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s “gooseberry” meant “all that is dreary and old-fashioned”; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square ... which was certainly Mrs. Tomkins’s shape, at least from the back.
But at last the distinguished soprano from Bristol ap-peared, together with her accompanist, the even more distin-guished Signer Ritornello (or some such name, for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience.
At least he began in the spirit of such an examination; as if it was his duty to do so, which hid the awkward fact that it was also his pleasure to do so. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah ... or at any rate with the enigma she presented. He had—or so he believed—fully intended, when he called to escort the ladies down Broad Street to the Assembly Rooms, to tell them of his meeting— though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah’s wanderings over Ware Com-mons. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. There was first of all a very material dispute to arbitrate upon—Ernestina’s folly in wearing grenadine when it was still merino weather, since “Thou shall not wear grenadine till May” was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten. Charles killed concern with compliment; but if Sarah was not mentioned, it was rather more because he had begun to feel that he had allowed himself to become far too deeply engaged in conversation with her—no, he had lost all sense of propor-tion. He had been very foolish, allowing a misplaced chivalry to blind his common sense; and the worst of it was that it was all now deucedly difficult to explain to Ernestina.