Here was a change! Ten minutes ago all Nature smiled on me; from the lark in the high heavens to the chirping grasshopper in the tall maize-field, it was one song of joy and gladness. The very clouds as they swept past threw new and varied light over the scene, as though to show fresh effects of beauty on the landscape,—the streams went by in circling eddies, like smiles upon a lovely face,—and now all was sad and crape-covered! “What has wrought this dreary change?” thought I; “is it possible that the cold looks of a young woman, good-looking, I grant, but no regular downright beauty after all, can have altered the aspect of the whole world to you? Are you so poor a creature in yourself, Potts, so beggared in your own resources, so barren in all the appliances of thought and reflection, that if your companion, whoever she or he may be, sulk, you must needs reflect the humor? Are you nothing but the mirror that displays what is placed before it?”
I set myself deliberately to scan the profile beside me; her black veil, drawn down on the side furthest from me, formed a sort of background, which displayed her pale features more distinctly. All about the brow and orbit was beautifully regular, but the mouth was, I fancied, severe; there was a slight retraction of the upper lip that seemed to imply over-firmness, and then the chin was deeply indented,—“a sign,” Lavater says, “of those who have a will of their own.” “Potts,” thought I, “she 'd rule you,—that's a nature would speedily master yours. I don't think there's any softness either, any of that yielding gentleness there, that makes the poetry of womanhood; besides, I suspect she's worldly,—those sharply cut nostrils are very worldly! She is, in fact,”—and here I unconsciously uttered my thoughts aloud,—“she is, in fact, one to say, 'Potts, how much have you got a-year? Let us have it in figures.'”
“So you are still ruminating over the life of that interesting creature,” said she, laying down her book to laugh; “and shall I confess, I lay awake half the night, inventing incidents and imagining situations for him.”
“For whom?” said I, innocently.
“For Potts, of course. I cannot get him out of my head such as I first fancied he might be, and I see now, by your unconscious allusion to him, that he has his place in your imagination also.”
“You mistake, Miss Herbert,—at least you very much misapprehend my conception of that character. The Potts family has a high historic tradition. Sir Constantine Potts was cup-bearer to Henry H., and I really see no reason why ridicule should attach to one who may be, most probably, his descendant.”
“I 'm very sorry, sir, if I should have dared to differ with you; but when I heard the name first, and in connection with two such names as Algernon Sydney, and when I thought by what strange accident did they ever meet in the one person—”
“You are very young, Miss Herbert, and therefore not removed from the category of the teachable,” said I, with a grand didactic look. “Let me guard you, therefore, against the levity of chance inferences. What would you say if a person named Potts were to make the offer of his hand? I mean, if he were a man in all respects acceptable, a gentleman captivating in manner and address, agreeable in person, graceful and accomplished,—what would you reply to his advances?”
“Really, sir, I am shocked to think of the humble opinion I may be conveying of my sense and judgment, but I'm afraid I should tell him it is impossible I could ever permit myself to be called Mrs. Potts.”
“But, in Heaven's name, why?—I ask you why?”