emselves.'

'I have been going to speak to you about them Gilbert,' said she.

And I: 'The girl must be studied. The family is good. While Charles is in
Wales, you must have her at Dayton. She laughs rather vacantly, don't you
think? but the sound of it has the proper wholesome ring. I will give her
what attention I can while she is here, but in the meantime I must have a
bride of my own and commence courting.'

'Parliament, you mean,' said Elizabeth with a frank and tender smile. The
hostess was summoned to welcome a new guest, and she left me, pleased
with her successful effort to reach my meaning, and absorbed by it.

I would not have challenged Machiavelli; but I should not have
encountered the Florentine ruefully. I feel the same keen delight in
intellectual dexterity. On some points my sister is not a bad match for
me. She can beat me seven games out of twelve at chess; but the five I
win sequently, for then I am awake. There is natural art and artificial
art, and the last beats the first. Fortunately for us, women are
strangers to the last. They have had to throw off a mask before they
have, got the schooling; so, when they are thus armed we know what we
meet, and what are the weapons to be used.

Alice, if she is a fine fencer at all, will expect to meet the ordinary
English squire in me. I have seen her at the baptismal font! It is
inconceivable. She will fancy that at least she is ten times more subtle
than I. When I get the mastery--it is unlikely to make me the master.
What may happen is, that the nature of the girl will declare itself,
under the hard light of intimacy, vulgar. Charles I cause to be absent
for six weeks; so there will be time enough for the probation. I do not
see him till he returns. If by chance I had come earlier to see him and
he to allude to her, he would have had my conscience on his side, and
that is what a scrupulous man takes care to prevent.

I wonder whether my friends imagine me to be the same man whom they knew
as Gilbert Pollingray a month back? I see the change, I feel the change;
but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling:
none for others, very little, for myself. I am told that I am losing
fluency as a dinner-table talker. There is now more savour to me in a
silvery laugh than in a spiced wit. And this is the man who knows women,
and is far too modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their merits.
Search myself through as I may, I canno