'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
Is the beautiful face as it passes;
The cockneys nod to each other aside,
The coxcombs lift their glasses.
'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
The ice-wall that guards her securely;
You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
As the heart that can image her purely.'
Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?
'True, Madam, you may think to part
Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
But Beauty's for the largest heart,
And all abysses Love can bridge!'"
Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.
"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never seen one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go parading your admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the subject when he thinks fit."
"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he murmured to a pleased ear:
"Beauty's for the largest heart!"
The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of passengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure. All faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and his Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before them, he looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape, projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something curious on his mind, and he gave Tom the word to speak out. Tom edged his master out of hearing, and began sputtering a laugh.
"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said. "That young Tom! He've come to town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more than a stag. He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis. Look at him, Mr. Richard! There he goes."