Leslie knew, by past experience, that to argue with his mother was hopeless, and he therefore remained silent. Something told him, when all was said, that he needed something that he did not possess. When first threatened with consumption, and the grasshopper of his young life had become a burden, he had looked death in the face, and shuddered. Life was sweet to him--music, and the beautiful things which were to him as a strain of music, were dear to his heart.
At a time when the natural beauties of field, and flower, and over-arching sky were far less to many than the coteries of fashion and the haunts of pleasure, so called, Leslie Travers had higher tastes, and yet he would fain have been other than he was. Religion, as offered to him by his mother's teachers, repelled him; and he cherished a secret bitterness against the grand ladies who sat on either side of the _haut pas_--described by Horace Walpole, in balconies reserved for "the elect" of noble birth--in Lady Huntingdon's Chapel in the Vineyards.
The waters of Bath had worked wonders on Leslie's bodily ailments. He began to feel strong again, with the strength of young manhood; and now there had risen upon his horizon that bright particular star--that, to him, marvel of perfect womanhood--Griselda Mainwaring. He had scarcely dared to take her name on his lips--it was a sacred name to him; and _yet_, in the lobby of Mr. Herschel's house, he had heard the man, who had so broadly flattered her that she had shrunk from his words as a sensitive plant shrinks from a rough touch of a hand--say, in answer to a question from a casual acquaintance:
"Who is she? Low-born I hear, and a mere poor dependent on the bounty of Lady Betty."
"Heaven help her!" had been the reply, "if that is all her dependence."
Then with a laugh, as he tapped his little silver snuff-box, Sir Maxwell Danby had said:
"She will easily find another maintenance. A beauty--true; but a beauty of no family can't afford to be particular."
It was at these words--insulting in their tone as well as in themselves--that Leslie Travers had raised his voice, and angrily demanded what the speaker meant, or how he could dare to speak lightly of a lady who had no father or brother to be her champion.