"Do you know, Bella," said Mrs. Trafford, as they sat together at the fire in her dressing-room, "I shall end by half liking him."
"I have n't got that far, Alice, though I own that I am less in dread of him than I was. His superiority is not so crushing as I feared it might be; and certainly, if he be the Admirable Crichton Mark pretends he is, he takes every possible pains to avoid all display of it."
"There may be some impertinence in that," said the other. "Did you remark how he was a week here before he as much as owned he knew anything of music, and listened to our weary little ballads every evening without a word? and last night, out of pure caprice, as it seemed, he sits down, and sings song after song of Verdi's difficult music, with a tenor that reminds one of Mario."
"And which has quite convinced old Mrs. Maxwell that he is a professional, or, as she called it, 'a singing man.'"
"She would call him a sketching man if she saw the caricature he made of herself in the pony carriage, which he tore up the moment he showed it to me."
"One thing is clear, Alice,--he means that we should like him; but he is too clever to set about it in any vulgar spirit of captivation."
"That is, he seeks regard for personal qualities rather more than admiration for his high gifts of intellect. Well, up to this, it is his cleverness that I like."
"What puzzles me is why he ever came here. He is asked about everywhere, has all manner of great houses open to him, and stores of fine people, of whose intimacy you can see he is proud; and yet he comes down to a dull country place in a dull county; and, stranger than all, he seems to like it."
"John Hunter says it is debt," said Mrs. Trafford.
"Mark Fortescue hints that a rich and handsome widow has something to say to it."
"Paul M'Clintock declares that he saw your picture by Ary Scheffer in the Exhibition, and fell madly in love with it, Bella."
"And old Colonel Orde says that he is intriguing to get in for the borough of Coleraine; that he saw him in the garden t'other morning with a list of the electors in his hand."
"My conjecture is, that he is intolerably bored everywhere, and came down here to try the effect of a new mode of the infliction that he had never experienced before. What else would explain a project I heard him arrange for this morning,--a walk with Beck Graham!"