This is our party: rather mixed, but very agreeable. I can't tell you now how we pass our time, for here am I at the end of my paper and patience.
Good-bye, Frank,
Ever yours,
CECIL.
CHAPTER II.
ROSE TO FANNY WORSLEY.
News, my dearest Fanny—news is an article as rare with us as with the morning papers. We see nobody, hear nothing, do nothing, but amuse ourselves as we best can, and that is not adapted to a letter, it would require such endless explanations.
In answer to your first question, Yes; Julius is here, or rather, he is with his mother at the Grange, and very frequently walks over. As to his being my slave, don't think it! He is evidently not indifferent to me, but as evidently not in love. The vainest of our sex (are we so vain?) in my place could not imagine him in love. I'm rather glad of it, for I certainly don't love him, and should be sorry to lose a friend.
But let me tell you of another new acquaintance in the jeune premier line,—a Mr. Cecil Chamberlayne, whom papa has invited here for a week. He is handsome, witty, good-natured, and clever—all very excellent qualities; but there is a levity about him which somewhat disturbs my liking for him. I could never fancy myself sentimental with him for a moment. His gaiety makes me laugh, but does not, somehow, make me gay. Everybody sides against me here, except Captain Heath, who says he feels as I do in that respect. They all swear by Mr. Chamberlayne; but, to my taste, Julius St. John's gaiety is far more exhilarating, perhaps because it is tempered with a manly seriousness; you feel that his laugh is as hearty (in the real primitive sense of the word) as his earnestness is sincere.
Violet is to be home at the end of this week. Papa has written for her, as mama says that she is only being spoiled at my uncle's. The real secret is, I believe, that mama has heard how Violet speaks of her down in Worcestershire, and that the character there given of her comes up to London. Now, though Violet is, I believe, unjust to mama, yet people are only too willing, as mama says, to believe everything ill of a stepmother. I fear Violet won't be comfortable. Suppose Julius St. John should fall in love with her? It would be a capital match. They would suit so well: I should like it above all things.
I am reading Leopardi's poems; they are very beautiful, and very mournful. Julius St. John says that they are the finest productions of modern Italy. By the way, though you will accuse me of filling my letter with Julius, I must tell you of something that occurred àpropos of Leopardi:—the first evening I met him—it was at Dr. Whiston's, and I wrote you a long account of it—he spoke to me of Leopardi, whom I had not heard so highly praised before. Papa had brought a copy with him from Italy, and I had looked into it from curiosity, but finding it difficult to read, my Italian being somewhat flimsy, I took no further trouble with it, till Julius spoke so enthusiastically about him. I then set doggedly to work, and mastered the poems; having done so, I read them over again with great pleasure, and am now a sworn admirer of this strange unhappy being.
Well, one evening, shortly after we had come down here, Julius took up my copy of Leopardi, which happened to be lying on the table. It was pencilled all over. He asked whose marks those were. I told him mine. "You seem to have been a careful reader," he said. "Your praises," I replied, "taught me to be."