th to meet a few friends at dinner. 'I think you admire Miss
Asper: in my idea a very saint among young women;--and you know what the
young women of our day are. She will be present. She is, you are aware,
England's greatest heiress. Only yesterday, hearing of that poor man
Mr. Warwick's desperate attack of illness--heart!--and of his having
no relative or friend to soothe his pillow,--he is lying in absolute
loneliness,--she offered to go and nurse him! Of course it could not
be done. It is not her place. The beauty of the character of a dear
innocent young girl, with every gratification at command, who could make
the offer, strikes me as unparalleled. She was perfectly sincere--she
is sincerity. She asked at once, Where is he? She wished me to accompany
her on a first visit. I saw a tear.'

Redworth had called at Lady Wathin's for information of the state of
Mr. Warwick, concerning which a rumour was abroad. No stranger to
the vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists;--rich, idle,
conscience-pricked or praise-catching;--he was unmoved by the tale that
Miss Asper had proposed to go to Mr. Warwick's sick-bed in the uniform
of a Sister of Charity.--'Speaking French!' Lady Wathin exclaimed; and
his head rocked, as he said:

'An Englishman would not be likely to know better.'

'She speaks exquisite French--all European languages, Mr. Redworth. She
does not pretend to wit. To my thinking, depth of sentiment is a far
more feminine accomplishment. It assuredly will be found a greater
treasure.'

The modest man (modest in such matters) was led by degrees to fancy
himself sounded regarding Miss Asper: a piece of sculpture glacially
decorative of the domestic mansion in person, to his thinking; and as to
the nature of it--not a Diana, with all her faults!

If Diana had any faults, in a world and a position so heavily against
her! He laughed to himself, when alone, at the neatly implied bitter
reproach cast on the wife by the forsaken young lady, who proposed to
nurse the abandoned husband of the woman bereaving her of the man she
loved. Sentimentalists enjoy these tricks, the conceiving or the doing
of them--the former mainly, which are cheaper, and equally effective.
Miss Asper might be deficient in wit; this was a form of practical wit,
occasionally exhibited by creatures acting on their instincts. Warwick
he pitied, and he put compulsion on himself to go and see the poor
fellow, the subject of so sublime a generosity