Registering a secret vow to be the death of the antiquated tiger aforesaid, I entered into conversation with Mrs. G. H., who, notwithstanding some unpleasant passages between our families, expressed unqualified delight at the thought of meeting us all once more; inquired after my mother most affectionately; and asked if the girls were looking well, and whether they rode and danced as beautifully as ever. She made, between times, little efforts to draw her friend into conversation by some allusion to Mary Anne's grace or Cary's accomplishments; but all in vain. Adeline only met the advances with a cold stare, or a little half-smile of most sneering expression. It was not that she was distant and reserved towards me. No, Bob; her manner was downright contemptuous; it was insulting; and yet such was the fascination her beauty had acquired over me that I could have knelt at her feet in adoration of her. I have no doubt that she saw this. I soon perceived that Mrs. Gore Hampton did. There is a wicked consciousness in a woman's look as she sees a man "hooked," there's no mistaking. Her eyes expressed this sentiment now; and, indeed, she did not try to hide it.
She invited me to come home and sup with them. She half tried to make Adeline say a word or two in support of the invitation; but no, she would not even hear it; and when I accepted, she half peevishly declared she had got a bad headache, and would go to bed after the play. I tell you these trivial circumstances, Bob, just that you may fancy how irretrievably lost I was when such palpable signs of dislike could not discourage me. I felt this all—and acutely too; but somehow with no sense of defeat, but a stubborn, resolute determination to conquer them.
I went back to sup with Mrs. G. H., and Adeline kept her word and retired. There were a few men—foreigners of distinction—but I sat beside the hostess, and heard nothing but praises of that "dear angel." These eulogies were mixed up with a certain tender pity that puzzled me sadly, since they always left the impression that either the angel had done something herself, or some one else had done it towards her, that called for all the most compassionate sentiments of the human heart. As to any chance of her history—who she was, whence she came, and so on—it was quite out of the question; you might as well hope for the private life of some aerial spirit that descends in the midst of canvas clouds in a ballet. She was there—to be worshipped, wondered at, and admired, but not to be catechised.
I left Mrs. H.'s house at three in the morning,—a sadder but scarcely a wiser man. She charged me most solemnly not to mention to any one where I had been,—a precaution possibly suggested by the fact that I had lost sixty Napoleons at lansquenet,—a game at which I left herself and her friends deeply occupied when I came away. I was burning with impatience for Tiverton to come back to Florence. He had gone down to the Maremma to shoot snipe. For, although I was precluded by my promise from divulging about the supper, I bethought me of a clever stratagem by which I could obtain all the counsel and guidance without any breach of faith, and this was, to take him with me some evening to the pit, station him opposite to No. 19, and ask all about its occupants; he knows everybody everywhere, so that I should have the whole history of my unknown charmer on the easiest of all terms.
From that day and that hour, I became a changed creature. The gay follies of my fashionable friends gave me no pleasure. I detested balls. I abhorred theatres. She ceased to frequent the opera. In fact, I gave the most unequivocal proof of my devotion to one by a most sweeping detestation of all the rest of mankind. Amidst my other disasters, I could not remember where Mrs. Gore Hampton lived. We had driven to her house after the theatre; it was a long way off, and seemed to take a very circuitous course to reach, but in what direction I had not the very vaguest notion of. The name of it, too, had escaped me, though she repeated it over several times when I was taking my leave of her. Of course, my omitting to call and pay my respects would subject me to every possible construction of rudeness and incivility, and here was, therefore, another source of irritation and annoyance to me.
My misanthropy grew fiercer. I had passed through the sad stage, and now entered upon the combative period of the disease. I felt an intense longing to have a quarrel with somebody. I frequented cafe's, and walked the streets in a battle, murder, and sudden-death humor,—frowning at this man, scowling at that. But, have you never remarked, the caprice of Fortune is in this as in all other things? Be indifferent at play, and you are sure to win; show yourself regardless of a woman, and you are certain to hear she wants to make your acquaintance. Go out of a morning in a mood of universal love and philanthropy, and I'll take the odds that you have a duel on your hands before evening.
There was one man in Florence whom I especially desired to fix a quarrel upon,—this was Morris, or, as he was now called, Sir Morris Penrhyn. A fellow who unquestionably ought to have had very different claims on my regard, but who now, in this perversion of my feelings, struck me as exactly the man to shoot or be shot by. Don't you know that sensation, Bob, in which a man feels that he must select a particular person, quite apart from any misfortune he is suffering under, and make him pay its penalty? It is a species of antipathy that defies all reason, and, indeed, your attempt to argue yourself out of it only serves to strengthen and confirm its hold on you.
Morris and I had ceased to speak when we met; we merely saluted coldly, and with that rigid observance of a courtesy that makes the very easiest prelude to a row, each party standing ready prepared to say "check" whenever the other should chance to make a wrong move. Perhaps I am not justified in saying so much of him, but I know that I do not exaggerate my own intentions. I fancied—what will a man not fancy in one of these eccentric stages of his existence?—that Morris saw my purpose, and evaded me. I argued myself into the notion that he was deficient in personal courage, and constructed upon this idea a whole edifice of absurdity.
I am ashamed, even before you, to acknowledge the extent to which my stupid infatuation blinded me; perhaps the best penalty to pay for it is an open confession.
I overtook our valet one morning with a letter in my governor's hand addressed to Sir Morris Penrhyn, and on inquiring, discovered that he and my father had been in close correspondence for the three days previous. At once I jumped to the conclusion that I was, somehow or other, the subject of these epistles, and in a fit of angry indignation I drove off to Morris's hotel.