Why? Partly because she demanded it, and there was
a quality in her demand that had touched some hidden spring--of vanity
perhaps it was--in him, that made him respond. But partly also it was
because after the evacuation of the palace at Princhester he had felt
more and more, felt but never dared to look squarely in the face, the
catastrophic change in the worldly circumstances of his family.
Only this chapel adventure seemed likely to restore those fallen and
bedraggled fortunes. He had not anticipated a tithe of the dire quality
of that change. They were not simply uncomfortable in the Notting Hill
home. They were miserable. He fancied they looked to him with something
between reproach and urgency. Why had he brought them here? What next
did he propose to do? He wished at times they would say it out instead
of merely looking it. Phoebe's failing appetite chilled his heart.
That concern for his family, he believed, had been his chief motive in
clinging to Lady Sunderbund's projects long after he had realized how
little they would forward the true service of God. No doubt there had
been moments of flattery, moments of something, something rather in the
nature of an excited affection; some touch of the magnificent in
her, some touch of the infantile,--both appealed magnetically to his
imagination; but the real effective cause was his habitual solicitude
for his wife and children and his consequent desire to prosper
materially.
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