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 cannot tell when the change
began, or what the change consists of, or what is the matter with me,
or what charm there is in the person who does