Explore "The Great House" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Had any one told Basset, even that morning, that before night he would seek the advice of the Riddsley curate, he would have met the suggestion with unmeasured scorn. Probably he had not since his college days spent an hour in intimate talk with a man so far from him in fortune and position, and so unlike him in those things which bring men together. Nor in the act of approaching Colet-under the impulse of a few casual words and a sudden thought-was he able to understand or to justify himself.
But when he rose to his feet after an hour spent beside the curate's dingy hearth-over the barber's shop in Stream Street-he did not need to justify the step. He had said little but he had heard much. Colet's tongue had been loosened by the sacrifice he had made, and inspired by that love of his kind which takes refuge in the most unlikely shapes, he had poured forth at length his beliefs and his aspirations. And Basset, whose world had tottered since morning, for whom common things had lost their poise and life its wonted aspect, began to think that he had found in the other's aims a new standpoint and the offer of a new beginning.