There then came the last sentence of Chapter 44 of Middlemarch, which the old schoolteacher had underlined in red, and which his son read aloud in a gloomy voice. Eddie was thinking that George Eliot’s sentence might apply to his feelings for Marion or Ruth—not to mention their imagined feelings for him. “He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” So what if his father had been a boring teacher? At least he’d marked all the pertinent passages. A student could have done a lot worse than to have taken a course from Minty O’Hare. The memorial service for
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