"Read them, no. He is too difficult."
"Difficult?"
"Why, we girls, as you are perhaps aware, are taught to distinguish sospiri from ardiri, and lagrime from affanni, after which we sing Bellini, and are said to know Italian. But when a poet a little more difficult than Metastasio is placed into our hands, we are at a stand-still."
In this way they chatted merrily enough. Julius was eloquent in his praise of Leopardi, from whom he went to Dante, to Byron, to Bulwer, Scott, and Miss Austen. Rose was delighted to find so many tastes and opinions shared in common with this pleasant young man, and could have sat all night talking to him. She had forgotten his ugliness in the charm of his conversation; but he had not forgotten her beauty, which was shown to greater advantage by the liveliness of her manner.
It was a delicious tête-à-tête. One of those accidental enjoyments which from time to time redeem the monotony of soirées, and for the chance of which one consents to be bored through a whole season. Not what was said, but how it was said, made the talk so delightful. The charm of sympathy, the comfort of finding yourself, as it were, mirrored in the soul of another, the easy unaffected flow of words dictated by no wish to shine, but simply suggested by the feeling, made Rose and Julius as intimate in that brief period, as if they had known each other many months.
Cannot Rose's unwillingness to leave now be appreciated? Cannot the reader understand her impatience at having such a tête-à-tête disturbed? But there was no help for it. She was forced to say adieu, and she held out her hand to him with a frankness which almost compensated him for the pain of seeing her depart. He went home and dreamt all night of her.
Mrs. Meredith Vyner, followed by her daughters, sought her husband, who was listening to a humorous narrative given him by Cecil Chamberlayne, of the elopement of the wife of a distinguished professor, with an officer almost young enough to be her son. Meredith Vyner laughed mildly, brushing the grains of snuff from his waistcoat with the back of his hand, and observed:—
"Egad! I always suspected it would end in that way. Such an ill-assorted match! Well, well, as Horace says, you know,
"Felices ter et amplius
Quos ...."
Here he was interrupted by the appearance of his wife, who, hurriedly intimating that she felt the rooms too hot, desired him to take her home.