"Still—she will be—Diana, sir!"
"But two years, Nephew—wealth, rank, adulation—can these have wrought no change, think you?"
"Only for the better, sir!"
"Oh, the sublime assurance of Youth!" murmured my uncle. "Have you no doubt of yourself, now that you are no longer the—the—ah—'only Richmond in the field'?"
Here, though I strove to speak, I could not, but walked with head bowed, but very conscious of his keen scrutiny.
"You are so intense, Perry," he continued after a moment, "so very, damnably intense that I confess I grow a little fearful lest you be disappointed, and therefore take the liberty to annoy you with my dismal croakings, if I may—shall I proceed?"
"Pray do, sir!"
"Then, Peregrine, I would warn you that, considering her new attitude towards life, her very altered views upon the world in general, it is only to be expected your gipsy may find you very different from her first estimation of you—"
"Ah, there it is, sir—there it is!" I groaned. "The haunting fear that to-day—measured by the larger standard of her new experiences, she may find me fall very far short of what she imagines me—"
"And if this be so,—how then?"