, but not in sincerity;
for already in that small compartment of your nature where a few honest
affections yet lingered _she was_ treasured, and, had you known how to
do it, you would have loved her. Poor devil as he was, Life was a hard
battle to him,--always over head and ears in debt; protested bills
meeting him at every moment; duns rising before him at every turn.
Levity was to him, as to many, a mere mask over Fear, and he walked the
world in the hourly terror that any moment might bring him to shame and
ruin. If he were a few minutes alone, his melancholy was almost
despair; and over and over had he pictured to his mind a scene in the
police-court, where he was called on to find full and sufficient bail
for his appearance on trial. From such sorrowing thoughts he made his
escape to rush into society--anywhere, anyhow; and, by the revulsion of
his mind, came that rattling and boisterous gayety that made him seem
the most light-hearted fellow in existence. Such men are always making
bonfires of their household gods, and have nothing to greet them when
they are at home.

What a fascination must Lizzy Davis have exercised over such a mind!
Her beauty and her gracefulness would not have been enough without her
splendid dressing, and that indescribable elegance of manner which was
native to her. Then how she amused him!--what droll caricatures did she
sketch of the queer originals of the place,--the bearded old colonels,
or the pretentious loungers that frequented the "Cursaal"! How witty the
little epigrams by which she accompanied them, and how charmingly at a
moment would she sit down at the piano and sing for him anything, from
a difficult "scena" from Verdi to some floating barcarole of Venice!
She could--let us tell it in one breath--make him laugh; and oh, dearly
valued reader! what would you or I give for the company of any one who
could do as much? The world is full of learned people and clever people.
There are Bourse men, and pre-Raphaelite men, and Old-red-sandstone men,
and Greek-particle men; but where are the pleasant people one used to
chat with long ago, who, though talking of mere commonplaces, threw out
little sparks of fun,--fireflies in the dark copses,--giving to what
they said that smack of epigram that spiced talk but never over-seasoned
it, whose genial sympathy sent a warm life-blood through every theme,
and whose outspoken heartiness refreshed one after a cold bath of polite
conventionalities