added the
assurance born of a certain small degree of success in his profession,
which he took for the pledge of approaching supremacy. He carried
himself better than he used, and his legs therefore did not look so
long. His hair continued to curl soft and silky about his head, for he
protested against the fashionable convict-style. His hat was new, and
he bore it in front of him like a ready apology.

It was to no presentableness of person, however, any more than to
previous acquaintance, that Tom now owed his admittance. True, he had
been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world
of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the
self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the
country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said,
that she could no longer endure a _tete-a-tete_ with one she knew so
little as herself, and whose acquaintance she was so little desirous of
cultivating.

Tom had been to a small party at the house a few evenings before,
brought thither by the well-known leader of a certain literary clique,
who, in return for homage, not seldom, took younger aspirants under a
wing destined never to be itself more than half-fledged. It was,
notwithstanding, broad enough already so to cover Tom with its shadow
that under it he was able to creep into several houses of a sort of
distinction, and among them into Mrs. Redmain's.

Nothing of less potency than the presumption attendant on
self-satisfaction could have emboldened him to call thus early, and
that in the hope not merely of finding Mrs. Redmain at home, but of
finding her alone; and, with the not unusual reward of unworthy daring,
he had succeeded. He was ambitious of making himself acceptable to
ladies of social influence, and of being known to stand well with such.
In the case of Mrs. Redmain he was the more anxious, because she had
not received him on any footing of former acquaintance.

At the gathering to which I have referred, a certain song was sung by a
lady, not without previous manoeuvre on the part of Tom, with which
Mrs. Redmain had languidly expressed herself pleased; that song he had
now brought her--for, concerning words and music both, he might have
said with Touchstone, "An ill-favored thing, but mine own." He did not
quote Touchstone because he believed both words and music
superexcellent, the former being in truth not quite bad, and the latter
nearly as goo