"What is it you most dislike to be made, Mr. Lovell?" inquired Sir Charles Wyndham, who had been restless and fidgetty, till he could catch at something in our conversation, which would enable him to join in it.
"A fool, Sir Charles," answered Henry, with an expression of countenance, which certainly did not bear in it any consciousness of his own folly.
"The ladies make fools of us all," said Sir Charles, with a bow to me.
"Unless they find us ready made," I heard Henry mutter, while I was obliged to turn round and listen to a string of compliments, and a flow of small talk from my right hand neighbour, which it seemed as if nothing would stop but some lucky accident, some sudden overthrow of the regular course of things, so steady and even was the tenor of its gentle prolixity. He had an eye, the mildness of which was appalling, and a smile of despairing sweetness. As I looked at him, I wished (which had never happened to me to wish before in looking at anybody's face) that he had been very ugly; no ugly face could have been so hopelessly tiresome. If but for a moment he could have looked cross or ill-natured, it would have been the making of him, or rather of me, for then I should have had courage to cut his discourse short, and turn away; but as it was, dinner was nearly over before I had another opportunity of speaking to Henry, who at last brought about the event I had pined for, by overturning a pyramid of red and white cherries, which went rolling all over the table in different directions, and for a moment engrossed Sir Charles's benevolent exertions. Henry immediately seized on the favourable moment, and resumed our conversation, though in an altered tone.
"The fact is, dear Ellen, that, on my arrival in London, I found my solicitor out of town, and my father gone on a visit to some friends of his in Hertfordshire. I have a general invitation to this place; and it struck me (I was wrong perhaps) that it might be, as well as a gratification to myself, a comfort to you, among a set of strangers, to find a friend; and I suppose I may call myself one."
He said all this in such a gentle, earnest manner, and in fact the thought had been such a kind one, that I felt quite ashamed of myself; and in the reaction of the moment, I turned to him with some emotion and said,
"You are very kind to me, Henry, and it grieves me to think that I must have appeared to you ungracious—ungrateful even."
"Only a little capricious," he answered; "and should I prize as much that bright smile of yours, Ellen, if the transient cloud had not made its brightness still dearer?"
At this moment Mrs. Brandon gave the signal for withdrawal. Henry whispered to me, as I was looking for my gloves under the table,
"Now that I have explained my being here, at the expense of a fearful havoc among Mr. Brandon's cherries, I shall be at leisure, when we come to the drawing-room, to give you my opinion of the society here; pray do not make up your mind about anybody till I come."