tanding?"

"I suppose so; what of that?"

"Why, it matters very little to either of us; and my question answers
yours."

I could not get on after this, and I never did get on a step further. I
must own that if Vivian did not impart his confidence liberally, neither
did he seek confidence inquisitively from me. He listened with interest
if I spoke of Trevanion (for I told him frankly of my connection with
that personage, though you may be sure that I said nothing of Fanny),
and of the brilliant world that my residence with one so distinguished
opened to me. But if ever, in the fulness of my heart, I began to speak
of my parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an ennui
or assumed so chilling a sneer that I usually hurried away from him, as
well as the subject, in indignant disgust. Once especially, when I asked
him to let me introduce him to my father,--a point on which I was really
anxious, for I thought it impossible but that the devil within him would
be softened by that contact,--he said, with his low, scornful laugh,--

"My dear Caxton, when I was a child I was so bored with 'Telemachus'
that, in order to endure it, I turned it into travesty."

"Well?"

"Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition might make a
caricature of your Ulysses?"

I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that speech; and I should
not have seen him then, only we met, by accident, under the Colonnade
of the Opera-House. Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and
watching the long procession which swept to the only temple in vogue
that Art has retained in the English Babel. Coaches and chariots
blazoned with arms and coronets, cabriolets (the brougham had not then
replaced them) of sober hue but exquisite appointment, with gigantic
horses and pigmy "tigers," dashed on, and rolled off before him. Fair
women and gay dresses, stars and ribbons, the rank and the beauty of the
patrician world,--passed him by. And I could not resist the compassion
with which this lonely, friendless, eager, discontented spirit inspired
me, gazing on that gorgeous existence in which it fancied itself formed
to shine, with the ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion. By one
glimpse of that dark countenance, I read what was passing within the yet
darker heart. The emotion might not be amiable, nor the thoughts wise,
yet were they unnatural? I had experienced something of them,--not at
the sight of gay-dressed people, of wea