"I'm sick of them all," he thought; "the De Beauseants, and Rastignacs, the German Jews, and the patrician beauties, and the Israelitish Circes of the Rue Taitbout, and the sickly self-sacrificing provincial angels, and the ghastly _vieilles filles_. Had that man ever seen such a woman as Charlotte, I wonder--a bright creature, all smiles and sunshine, and sweet impulsive tenderness; an angel who can be angelic without being _poitrinaire_, and whose amiability never degenerates into scrofula? There is an odour of the dissecting-room pervading all my friend Balzac's novels, and I don't think he was capable of painting a fresh, healthy nature. What a mass of disease he would have made Lucy Ashton, and with what dismal relish he would have dilated upon the physical sufferings of Amy Robsart in the confinement of Cumnor Hall! No, my friend Honoré, you are the greatest and grandest of painters of the terrible school; but the time comes when a man sighs for something brighter and better than your highest type of womanhood."
Mr. Hawkehurst put his book in his pocket, and abandoned himself to meditation, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, unconscious of the trundling hoops and screaming children.
"She is better and fairer than the fairest heroine of a novel," he thought. "She is like Heloise. Yes, the quaint old French fits her to a nicety:
'Elle ne fu oscure ne brune, Ains fu clere comme la lune, Envers qui les autres estoiles Ressemblent petites chandoiles.'
Mrs. Browning must have known such a woman:
'Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace; You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face;'
Was she not?" mused the lover. "Is she not? Yes," he cried suddenly, as he saw a scarlet petticoat gleaming in the distance, and a bright young face under a little black turban hat--prettiest and most bewitching of all feminine headgear, let fashion change as it may. "Yes," he cried, "she is the loveliest creature in the world, and I love her to distraction." He rose, and went to meet the loveliest creature in the world, whose earthly name was Charlotte Halliday. She was walking with Diana Paget, who, to more sober judges, might have seemed the handsomer woman of the two. Alas for Diana! the day had been when Valentine Hawkehurst considered her very handsome, and had need to fight a hard battle with himself in order not to fall in love with her. He had been conqueror in that struggle of prudence and honour against nascent love, only to be vanquished utterly by Charlotte's brighter charms and Charlotte's sunnier nature.