Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge

to inform me that there was a gentleman below who wished to see me. I told her to show him up, and she returned in a moment, ushering in, to my

nt; he always seemed perfectly at his ease. And he had acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire-the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate man

ous feeling he had known since he set off on his travels, was the hour or two

e way that he had seen much, and thought more. "I think I have learnt myself

long, that I don't know where to begin, and I want you to help me. I want to be introduced t

people. I took him to dine there once or twice, and he needed nothing else. He had a real genius for tête-à-tête conversation; that is, he could listen without appea

formed and clever, and he doesn't allow it to make him in the least disagreeable." And starting

iving people, I have thought it better, after consultation with the friends of both, to leave the outlines of the story rather vague; and secondly, there are great gap

told me, among other things, that my physiognomy, being of a grave and gloomy cast, was of a kind that was not suitable to a fes

cted from one of his letters of this per

indignation, but to those vague tumultuous feelings for which we have,

pectability through the cigarette smoke; and then, I say, to come up-stairs, and see moving about among the knowing selfish people a child with hair like gold thread, and something of the regretful innocence of heaven in her eyes and motions. If you can get her to talk to you, so much the better for y

tole on to the paper in that quaint German garden with the clipped yew-hedges and the tall summer-house in the corner, in the master's pointed handwriting, call

ntil its sweet course is run, all the hard and stifling web of convention and opinion that closes us in; it takes me back for a moment to old-world fancies, till I seem to feel, as I am always longing to feel, that we are separated on

party or a ball, to smoke a cigar, and it was very interesting to watch his growin

ion of the lady next me to-night, you'd have thought that the premier said, every morning when his shaving-water was

t next a young lady in whom the fashion

er character; she was what would now be cal

a rule, did not like her-she used to receive calls from her own men friends in her

ften," he said, "heard her allude to things and tell stories that would be considered unusual, even indelicate. But I never heard her say a thing in which the

her. Her father was a testy old country

e than his share of luck in breaking windows and articles of furniture. One morning Mr. B--, finding

ket with Maud, and made a sharp cut into the great greenhouse

ey stood there, Mr. B--'s garden door, just round the corner, was heard to

quickened his pace, hearing the crash, and came round the corner with his most judicial and infuriated air, rather hoping to pack the culprit out of the place,

that day forth; and so did ot

he was very fastidious, and the least suggestion of aiming at effect or vulgarity, or

d on each occasion on impulse, never calculating eff

ne with a Cambridge undergraduate in his dog-cart down to Ric

B--, and showed not the slightest i

talker-with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a "past

f an evening party at her own house. They were sitting in a balcony looking o

r the whole world." And she spread out her hands to the great city with all her lights glaring

silent for

y you said that," she said. "

the ten minutes I was talking to you, you spoke and dismissed eight people, every one of whom was jealous of me, and thinking 'Who's the

ch would mean, 'I would give anything to have a quiet talk to you, Mr. Hami

ng of insecurity-that perhaps you are just 'carrying on' with me because it is your whim, and t

ost fiercely. "I never forget people." And she rose and went quickly

oked at her, thinking he had offended her; but she came a

ot true, but you meant it to be true; you believed it. And please don't stop talk

rd for word as I have given it. But there is omitted from

fter commenting upon their freedom of speech with one another,

cepted a gentleman who was in every way a suitable

sentences of a letter he wrote to me on the event. It conceals

element. You remember what I said to you about Miss B--, that I did not care for her. A fancied immunity is often a pre

n-ratifies, I should feel more content. But she trusts her impulses too much; and the habit of loving all she loves with passion, blinds her a little. A woman who loves her sister, her pets, the very sunshine and air with passion, hardly knows what a lover is. I can not