Explore "Virginia" by Ellen Glasgow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Cyrus's knock came at his door, Oliver crossed the room to let in his visitor, and then fell back, startled, at the sight of his uncle. "I wonder what has brought him here? " he thought inhospitably. But even if he had put the question, it is doubtful if Cyrus could have enlightened him -- for the great man was so seldom visited by an impulse that when, as now, one actually took possession of him, he obeyed the pressure almost unconsciously. Like most men who pride themselves upon acting solely from reason, he was the abject slave of the few instincts which had managed to take root and thrive in the stony ground of his nature. The feeling for family, which was so closely entwined with his supreme feeling for property that the two had become inseparable, moved him to-day as it had done on the historic occasion when he had redeemed the mortgaged roof over the heads of his spinster relations.
Perhaps, too, some of the vague softness of June had risen in him and made him gentler in his judgments of youth.