s
enough. He is going to ask you to dine with him on Saturday. We shall
be there, and Mr. Waldershare is going. He has a beautiful place, and
it will be very pleasant." And exactly as Imogene had anticipated,
Mr. Vigo, in the course of the evening, did ask Endymion to do him the
honour of being his guest.

The villa of Mr. Vigo was on the banks of the Thames, and had once
belonged to a noble customer. The Palladian mansion contained a suite of
chambers of majestic dimensions--lofty ceilings, rich cornices, and
vast windows of plate glass; the gardens were rich with the products of
conservatories which Mr. Vigo had raised with every modern improvement,
and a group of stately cedars supported the dignity of the scene and
gave to it a name. Beyond, a winding walk encircled a large field
which Mr. Vigo called the park, and which sparkled with gold and silver
pheasants, and the keeper lived in a newly-raised habitation at the
extreme end, which took the form of a Swiss cottage.

The Rodney family, accompanied by Mr. Waldershare and Endymion, went to
the Cedars by water. It was a delightful afternoon of June, the river
warm and still, and the soft, fitful western breeze occasionally rich
with the perfume of the gardens of Putney and Chiswick. Waldershare
talked the whole way. It was a rhapsody of fancy, fun, knowledge,
anecdote, brilliant badinage--even passionate seriousness. Sometimes
he recited poetry, and his voice was musical; and, then, when he had
attuned his companions to a sentimental pitch, he would break into
mockery, and touch with delicate satire every mood of human feeling.
Endymion listened to him in silence and admiration. He had never heard
Waldershare talk before, and he had never heard anybody like him. All
this time, what was now, and ever, remarkable in Waldershare were his
manners. They were finished, even to courtliness. Affable and winning,
he was never familiar. He always addressed Sylvia as if she were one of
those duchesses round whom he used to linger. He would bow deferentially
to her remarks, and elicit from some of her casual observations an acute
or graceful meaning, of which she herself was by no means conscious. The
bow of Waldershare was a study. Its grace and ceremony must have been
organic; for there was no traditionary type in existence from which he
could have derived or inherited it. He certainly addressed Imogene and
spoke to her by her Christian name; but this was partly because he w