‘I am absolutely blessed,’ said my lady, casting up her eyes (and so taking them off me for one moment), ‘in having to do with gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the idea of being mercenary!’ She shivered at the word. ‘And now as to the pupil.’
‘The—?’ I was quite at a loss.
‘Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She is,’ said my lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, ‘I do verily believe, the most extraordinary girl in this world. Already knows more Greek and Latin than Lady Jane Grey. And taught herself! Has not yet, remember, derived a moment’s advantage from Mr. Silverman’s classical acquirements. To say nothing of mathematics, which she is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear from my son and others) Mr. Silverman’s reputation is so deservedly high!’
Under my lady’s eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded; and yet I did not know where I could have dropped it.
‘Adelina,’ said my lady, ‘is my only daughter. If I did not feel quite convinced that I am not blinded by a mother’s partiality; unless I was absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it a high and unusual privilege to direct her studies,—I should introduce a mercenary element into this conversation, and ask you on what terms—’
I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw that I was troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my request.
EIGHTH CHAPTER
Everything in mental acquisition that her brother might have been, if he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable qualities that no one but herself could be,—this was Adelina.
I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; I am over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as she was in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful and good.
When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say? In the first day? in the first week? in the first month? Impossible to trace. If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous period of my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can I answer for this one detail?