“But your Punch listens,” said Mrs. Campion,
“and he observes.”
George Belvoir, on the other hand, was universally
declared to be very agreeable. Though not naturally
jovial, he forced himself to appear so,—laughing
loud with the squires, and entering heartily with their
wives and daughters into such topics as county-balls
and croquet-parties; and when after dinner he had,
Cato-like, ’warmed his virtue with wine,’
the virtue came out very lustily in praise of good
men,—namely, men of his own party,—and
anathemas on bad men,—namely, men of the
other party.
Now and then he appealed to Kenelm, and Kenelm always
returned the same answer, “There is much in
what you say.”
The first evening closed in the usual way in country
houses. There was some lounging under moonlight
on the terrace before the house; then there was some
singing by young lady amateurs, and a rubber of whist
for the elders; then wine-and-water, hand-candlesticks,
a smoking-room for those who smoked, and bed for those
who did not.
In the course of the evening, Cecilia, partly in obedience
to the duties of hostess and partly from that compassion
for shyness which kindly and high-bred persons entertain,
had gone a little out of her way to allure Kenelm
forth from the estranged solitude he had contrived
to weave around him. In vain for the daughter
as for the father. He replied to her with the
quiet self-possession which should have convinced
her that no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence
for the gentlemanlike infirmity of shyness, and no
man less needed the duties of any hostess for the
augmentation of his comforts, or rather for his diminished
sense of discomfort; but his replies were in monosyllables,
and made with the air of a man who says in his heart,
“If this creature would but leave me alone!”
Cecilia, for the first time in her life, was piqued,
and, strange to say, began to feel more interest about
this indifferent stranger than about the popular,
animated, pleasant George Belvoir, who she knew by
womanly instinct was as much in love with her as he
could be.
Cecilia Travers that night on retiring to rest told
her maid, smilingly, that she was too tired to have
her hair done; and yet, when the maid was dismissed,
she looked at herself in the glass more gravely and
more discontentedly than she had ever looked there
before; and, tired though she was, stood at the window
gazing into the moonlit night for a good hour after
the maid left her.
KENELM CHILLINGLY has now been several days a guest
at Neesdale Park. He has recovered speech; the
other guests have gone, including George Belvoir.
Leopold Travers has taken a great fancy to Kenelm.
Leopold was one of those men, not uncommon perhaps
in England, who, with great mental energies, have
little book-knowledge, and when they come in contact
with a book-reader who is not a pedant feel a pleasant
