"No," he repeated, "it is not that."
Again there was no reply; and he went on awkwardly, like an actor who has missed his cue.
"Since I have known you I have been at once too happy and too wretched. Happy—unspeakably happy in your society; miserable in the knowledge that I could never be more to you than an unit in the crowd."
"You were a great deal more to me than that," said Mabel softly. She bad been on her guard against him just now, but when he thus abased himself before her she took pity upon him, and became dangerously amiable. "I shall never forget your kindness about those wretched verses."
"I will not hear you speak ill of them," cried Lord Mallow indignantly. "You have but shared the common fate of genius, in having a mind in advance of your age."
Lady Mabel breathed a gentle sigh of resignation.
"I am not so weak as to think myself a genius," she murmured; "but I venture to hope my poor verses will be better understood twenty years hence than they are now."
"Undoubtedly!" cried Lord Mallow, with conviction. "Look at Wordsworth; in his lifetime the general reading public considered him a prosy old gentleman, who twaddled pleasantly about lakes and mountains, and pretty little peasant girls. The world only awakened ten years ago to the fact of his being a great poet and a sublime philosopher; and I shouldn't be very much surprised," added Lord Mallow meditatively, "if in ten years more the world were to go to sleep again and forget him."
Lady Mabel looked at her watch.
"I think I will go in and give mamma her afternoon cup of tea," she said.