ou grow spiteful--impertinent."

"Lucia has trodden the stage," continued Frances. "You never seriously
thought of marrying her; you admired her originality, her fearlessness,
her energy of body and mind; you delighted in her talent, whatever that
was, whether song, dance, or dramatic representation; you worshipped her
beauty, which was of the sort after your own heart: but I am sure she
filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a
wife."

"Ingenious," remarked Hunsden; "whether true or not is another question.
Meantime, don't you feel your little lamp of a spirit wax very pale,
beside such a girandole as Lucia's?"

"Yes."

"Candid, at least; and the Professor will soon be dissatisfied with the
dim light you give?"

"Will you, monsieur?"

"My sight was always too weak to endure a blaze, Frances," and we had
now reached the wicket.

I said, a few pages back, that this is a sweet summer evening; it
is--there has been a series of lovely days, and this is the loveliest;
the hay is just carried from my fields, its perfume still lingers in the
air. Frances proposed to me, an hour or two since, to take tea out
on the lawn; I see the round table, loaded with china, placed under a
certain beech; Hunsden is expected--nay, I hear he is come--there is his
voice, laying down the law on some point with authority; that of Frances
replies; she opposes him of course. They are disputing about Victor,
of whom Hunsden affirms that his mother is making a milksop. Mrs.
Crimsworth retaliates:--

"Better a thousand times he should be a milksop than what he, Hunsden,
calls 'a fine lad;' and moreover she says that if Hunsden were to become
a fixture in the neighbourhood, and were not a mere comet, coming and
going, no one knows how, when, where, or why, she should be quite uneasy
till she had got Victor away to a school at least a hundred miles off;
for that with his mutinous maxims and unpractical dogmas, he would ruin
a score of children."

I have a word to say of Victor ere I shut this manuscript in my
desk--but it must be a brief one, for I hear the tinkle of silver on
porcelain.

Victor is as little of a pretty child as I am of a handsome man, or his
mother of a fine woman; he is pale and spare, with large eyes, as dark
as those of Frances, and as deeply set as mine. His shape is symmetrical
enough, but slight; his health is good. I never saw a child smile less
than he does, nor one who knits such a for