nterest in his life; to have been
deprived of it would have been heartrending; that dread eventuality
had been--somehow--avoided; he was installed once more, in a kind of
triumph; let him enjoy the fleeting hours to the full! And so, cherished
by the favour of a sovereign and warmed by the adoration of a girl,
the autumn rose, in those autumn months of 1839, came to a wondrous
blooming. The petals expanded, beautifully, for the last time. For
the last time in this unlooked--for, this incongruous, this almost
incredible intercourse, the old epicure tasted the exquisiteness of
romance. To watch, to teach, to restrain, to encourage the royal
young creature beside him--that was much; to feel with such a constant
intimacy the impact of her quick affection, her radiant vitality--that
was more; most of all, perhaps, was it good to linger vaguely in
humorous contemplation, in idle apostrophe, to talk disconnectedly, to
make a little joke about an apple or a furbelow, to dream. The springs
of his sensibility, hidden deep within him, were overflowing. Often, as
he bent over her hand and kissed it, he found himself in tears.

Upon Victoria, with all her impermeability, it was inevitable that such
a companionship should have produced, eventually, an effect. She was no
longer the simple schoolgirl of two years since. The change was visible
even in her public demeanour. Her expression, once "ingenuous
and serene," now appeared to a shrewd observer to be "bold and
discontented." She had learnt something of the pleasures of power and
the pains of it; but that was not all. Lord Melbourne with his gentle
instruction had sought to lead her into the paths of wisdom and
moderation, but the whole unconscious movement of his character had
swayed her in a very different direction. The hard clear pebble,
subjected for so long and so constantly to that encircling and insidious
fluidity, had suffered a curious corrosion; it seemed to be actually
growing a little soft and a little clouded. Humanity and fallibility are
infectious things; was it possible that Lehzen's prim pupil had caught
them? That she was beginning to listen to siren voices? That the secret
impulses of self-expression, of self-indulgence even, were mastering
her life? For a moment the child of a new age looked back, and wavered
towards the eighteenth century. It was the most critical moment of her
career. Had those influences lasted, the development of her character,
the history