‘Do come, Ferdinand,’ said Katherine.
‘I ask you as a favour,’ said Henrietta, turning to him and speaking in a low voice.
‘Well,’ said Ferdinand, with a sigh.
‘That is well,’ said Montfort; ‘now let us trot through the Park, and the groom can call in Grosvenor-square and Brook-street, and gallop after us. This is amusing, is it not?’
CHAPTER IX.
Which Is on the Whole Almost as Perplexing as the Preceding
One.
WHEN Ferdinand found himself dining in St. James’-square, in the very same room where he had passed so many gay hours during that boyish month of glee which preceded his first joining his regiment, and then looked opposite him and saw Henrietta Temple, it seemed to him that, by some magical process or other, his life was acting over again, and the order of the scenes and characters had, by some strange mismanagement, got confused. Yet he yielded himself up to the excitement which had so unexpectedly influenced him; he was inflamed by a species of wild delight which he could not understand, nor stop to analyse; and when the duchess retired with the young ladies to their secret conclave in the drawing-room, she said, ‘I like Captain Armine very much; he is so full of spirit and imagination. When we met him this morning, do you know, I thought him rather stiff and fine. I regretted the bright boyish flow that I so well recollected, but I see I was mistaken.’
‘Ferdinand is much changed,’ said Miss Grandison. ‘He was once the most brilliant person, I think, that ever lived: almost too brilliant; everybody by him seemed so tame. But since his illness he has quite changed. I have scarcely heard him speak or seen him smile these six months. There is not in the whole world a person so wretchedly altered. He is quite a wreck. I do not know what is the matter with him to-day. He seemed once almost himself.’
‘He indulged his feelings too much, perhaps,’ said Henrietta; ‘he lived, perhaps, too much alone, after so severe an illness.’