Not that he was destitute of
ideals about women--they would have formed in that case
a strange exception to his general outlook--but he saw
them on a plane detached and impersonal, concerned with
the preservation of society the maintenance of the home,
the noble devotions of motherhood. Women had been known,
historically, to be capable of lofty sentiments and fine
actions: he would have been the last to withhold their
due from women. But they were removed from the scope of
his imagination, partly by the accidents I have mentioned
and partly, no doubt, by a simple lack in him of the
inclination to seek and to know them.
So that Christie Cameron, when she came to stay with his
aunt in Bross during the few weeks after his ordination
and before his departure for Canada, found a fair light
for judgement and more than a reasonable disposition to
acquiesce in the scale of her merits, as a woman, on the
part of Hugh Finlay. He was familiar with the scale of
her merits before she came; his Aunt Lizzie did little
but run them up and down. When she arrived she answered
to every item she was a good height, but not too tall;
a nice figure of a woman, but not what you would call
stout; a fresh-faced body whose excellent principles were
written in every feature she had. She was five years
older than Hugh, but even that he came to accept in Aunt
Lizzie's skilful exhibition as something to the total of
her advantages.
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