"I have nothing to say to him; he has every thing to say to me. He is my master."
"An eccentric taste for so young a girl; and Byron? and Moore? and Mrs. Hemans? and Leigh Hunt? and Barry Cornwall?"
"Oh, every one likes them, but one gets tired of hearing lions roar, and harps play, and angels sing; and then one goes to Shelley for refreshment. He is never monotonous; he was a perennial fountain, singing at its source, and nearly all was fragmentary that he wrote, of course, wanting an outlet. The mind finishes out so much for itself, and the thought comes to one always, that he was completed in heaven. No other verse stirs me like his. You know he wrote it because he had to write or die. He was a poet, or nothing."
"You ought to write criticisms for Blackwood, really, Miss Monfort, and give a woman's reason for every opinion," with ill-concealed derision.
"You are laughing at me now, of course, but I don't regard good-natured raillery. I am sure I should not enjoy poetry as I do were I a better critic. I love flowers far more than many who understand botany as a science, and pull them to pieces scientifically and analytically."
"And paintings; do you love them?"
"Oh, passionately!"
"I confess I am blase with art," he said, quietly; "I have seen so much of it, I like nature far better;" adding, after a pause, "now, that is your chief charm. Miss Monfort."
"What, being natural?"
"How well you divine my meaning!" with a little irony in the voice and eye. The tendency of his mind was evidently sarcastic.