“Trust me; I only hope you will be always equally discreet: but now—when shall it be? Should you like to consider the matter more?”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind; let it be to-morrow, at once, if I am to fail; even that—anything’s better than suspense.”
“Well, then, to-morrow be it,” said I.
So I wished him a good-night, and a stout heart to hear his fortune withal.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
A MISTAKE.
I ordered my horses at an early hour; and long before Sparks—lover that he was—had opened his eyes to the light, was already on my way towards Gurt-na-Morra. Several miles slipped away before I well determined how I should open my negotiations: whether to papa Blake, in the first instance, or to madame, to whose peculiar province these secrets of the home department belonged; or why not at once to Baby?—because, after all, with her it rested finally to accept or refuse. To address myself to the heads of the department seemed the more formal course; and as I was acting entirely as an “envoy extraordinary,” I deemed this the fitting mode of proceeding.
It was exactly eight o’clock as I drove up to the door. Mr. Blake was standing at the open window of the breakfast-room, sniffing the fresh air of the morning. The Blake mother was busily engaged with the economy of the tea-table; a very simple style of morning costume, and a nightcap with a flounce like a petticoat, marking her unaffected toilet. Above stairs, more than one head en papillate took a furtive peep between the curtains; and the butler of the family, in corduroys and a fur cap, was weeding turnips in the lawn before the door.
Mrs. Blake had barely time to take a hurried departure, when her husband came out upon the steps to bid me welcome. There is no physiognomist like your father of a family, or your mother with marriageable daughters. Lavater was nothing to them, in reading the secret springs of action, the hidden sources of all character. Had there been a good respectable bump allotted by Spurzheim to “honorable intentions,” the matter had been all fair and easy,—the very first salute of the gentleman would have pronounced upon his views. But, alas! no such guide is forthcoming; and the science, as it now exists, is enveloped in doubt and difficulty. The gay, laughing temperament of some, the dark and serious composure of others; the cautious and reserved, the open and the candid, the witty, the sententious, the clever, the dull, the prudent, the reckless,—in a word, every variety which the innumerable hues of character imprint upon the human face divine are their study. Their convictions are the slow and patient fruits of intense observation and great logical accuracy. Carefully noting down every lineament and feature,—their change, their action, and their development,—they track a lurking motive with the scent of a bloodhound, and run down a growing passion with an unrelenting speed. I have been in the witness-box, exposed to the licensed badgering and privileged impertinence of a lawyer, winked, leered, frowned, and sneered at with all the long-practised tact of a nisi prius torturer; I have stood before the cold, fish-like, but searching eye of a prefect of police, as he compared my passport with my person, and thought he could detect a discrepancy in both,—but I never felt the same sense of total exposure as when glanced at by the half-cautious, half-prying look of a worthy father or mother, in a family where there are daughters to marry, and “nobody coming to woo.”