Natural shyness had always held him aloof from reputable
women; he felt that he could not recommend himself to them--he who had such
an unlucky aptitude for saying the wrong word or keeping silence when
speech was demanded. With the men of his acquaintance he could relieve his
sense of awkwardness and deficiency by becoming aggressive; in fact, he had
a reputation for cantankerousness, for pugnacity, which kept most of his
equals in some awe of him, and to perceive this was one solace amid many
discontents. Nicely dressed and well-spoken and good-looking women above
the class of domestic servants he worshipped from afar, and only in
vivacious moments pictured himself as the wooer of such a superior being.
It seemed as though fate could do nothing with Mr. Farmiloe. At
six-and-thirty he suffered the shock of learning that a relative--an old
woman to whom he had occasionally written as a matter of kindness (Farmiloe
could do such things)--had left him by will the sum of L600. It was
strictly a shock; it upset his health for several days, and not for a week
or two could he realise the legacy as a fact. Just when he was beginning to
look about him with a new air of confidence, the solicitors who were
managing the little affair for him drily acquainted him with the fact that
his relative's will was contested by other kinsfolk whom the old woman had
passed over, on the ground that she was imbecile and incapable of
conducting her affairs.
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