n the various walks, sometimes at the public balls of the
place. He seemed solitary. His manner was very unpretending--too simple
to be termed affable; rather timid than proud. He did not _condescend_
to their society; he seemed _glad_ of it.

With any unaffected individual Shirley could easily and quickly cement
an acquaintance. She walked and talked with Sir Philip; she, her aunt,
and cousins sometimes took a sail in his yacht. She liked him because
she found him kind and modest, and was charmed to feel she had the power
to amuse him.

One slight drawback there was--where is the friendship without it?--Sir
Philip had a literary turn. He wrote poetry--sonnets, stanzas, ballads.
Perhaps Miss Keeldar thought him a little too fond of reading and
reciting these compositions; perhaps she wished the rhyme had possessed
more accuracy, the measure more music, the tropes more freshness, the
inspiration more fire. At any rate, she always winced when he recurred
to the subject of his poems, and usually did her best to divert the
conversation into another channel.

He would beguile her to take moonlight walks with him on the bridge, for
the sole purpose, as it seemed, of pouring into her ear the longest of
his ballads. He would lead her away to sequestered rustic seats, whence
the rush of the surf to the sands was heard soft and soothing; and when
he had her all to himself, and the sea lay before them, and the scented
shade of gardens spread round, and the tall shelter of cliffs rose
behind them, he would pull out his last batch of sonnets, and read them
in a voice tremulous with emotion. He did not seem to know that though
they might be rhyme they were not poetry. It appeared, by Shirley's
downcast eye and disturbed face, that she knew it, and felt heartily
mortified by the single foible of this good and amiable gentleman.

Often she tried, as gently as might be, to wean him from this fanatic
worship of the Muses. It was his monomania; on all ordinary subjects he
was sensible enough, and fain was she to engage him in ordinary topics.
He questioned her sometimes about his place at Nunnely; she was but too
happy to answer his interrogatories at length. She never wearied of
describing the antique priory, the wild silvan park, the hoary church
and hamlet; nor did she fail to counsel him to come down and gather his
tenantry about him in his ancestral halls.

Somewhat to her surprise, Sir Philip followed her advice to the letter,