Travers greeted him with great cordiality; and Lady
Glenalvon asking him to escort her to the refreshment-room,
Kenelm had no option but to offer his arm to Cecilia.
Kenelm felt somewhat embarrassed. “Have
you been long in town, Miss Travers?”
“A little more than a week, but we only settled
into our house yesterday.”
“Ah, indeed! were you then the young lady who—”
He stopped short, and his face grew gentler and graver
in its expression.
“The young lady who—what?”
asked Cecilia with a smile.
“Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon?”
“Yes; did she tell you?”
“She did not mention your name, but praised
that young lady so justly that I ought to have guessed
it.”
Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on
entering the refreshment-room other young men gathered
round her, and Lady Glenalvon and Kenelm remained
silent in the midst of a general small-talk.
When Travers, after giving his address to Kenelm,
and, of course, pressing him to call, left the house
with Cecilia, Kenelm said to Lady Glenalvon, musingly,
“So that is the young lady in whom I was to
see my fate: you knew that we had met before?”
“Yes, she told me when and where. Besides,
it is not two years since you wrote to me from her
father’s house. Do you forget?”
“Ah,” said Kenelm, so abstractedly that
he seemed to be dreaming, “no man with his eyes
open rushes on his fate: when he does so his sight
is gone. Love is blind. They say the blind
are very happy, yet I never met a blind man who would
not recover his sight if he could.”
Mr. Chillingly Mivers never gave a dinner
at his own rooms. When he did give a dinner
it was at Greenwich or Richmond. But he gave
breakfast-parties pretty often, and they were considered
pleasant. He had handsome bachelor apartments
in Grosvenor Street, daintily furnished, with a prevalent
air of exquisite neatness, a good library stored with
books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies
from authors of the day, very beautifully bound.
Though the room served for the study of the professed
man of letters, it had none of the untidy litter which
generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation
it is to deal with books and papers. Even the
implements for writing were not apparent, except when
required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder
bureau, French made, and French polished. Within
that bureau were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers,
and a profound well with a separate patent lock.
In the well were deposited the articles intended
for publication in “The Londoner,” proof-sheets,
etc.; pigeon-holes were devoted to ordinary correspondence;
secret drawers to confidential notes, and outlines
of biographies of eminent men now living, but intended
to be completed for publication the day after their
death.
