Mr. MacBorrowdale. Eh! but he is subjected to a pretty severe competitive examination of his own, by what they call a constituency, who just put him to the test in the art of conjuring, to see if he can shift money from his own pocket into theirs, without any inconvenient third party being aware of the transfer.
CHAPTER XVI
MISS NIPHET—THE THEATRE—THE LAKE—DIVIDED ATTRACTION—INFALLIBLE SAFETY
Amiam: che non ha tregua
Con gli anni umana vita, e si dilegua.
Amiam: che il sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S'asconde, e il sonno eterna notte adduce.
Tasso: Aminta.
Love, while youth knows its prime,
For mortal life can make no truce with time.
Love: for the sun goes down to rise as bright;
To us his transient light
Is veiled, and sleep comes on with everlasting night.
Lord Curryfin was too much a man of the world to devote his attentions in society exclusively to one, and make them the subject of special remark. He left the inner drawing-room, and came up to the doctor to ask him if he knew the young lady who had sung the last ballad. The doctor knew her well. She was Miss Niphet, the only daughter of a gentleman of fortune, residing a few miles distant.
Lord Curryfin. As I looked at her while she was singing, I thought of Southey's description of Laila's face in Thadaba:
A broad light floated o'er its marble paleness,
As the wind waved the fountain fire.
Marble paleness suits her well. There is something statuesque in her whole appearance. I could not help thinking what an admirable Camilla she would make in Cimarosa's Orazii. Her features are singularly regular. They had not much play, but the expression of her voice was such as if she felt the full force of every sentiment she uttered.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I consider her to be a person of very deep feeling, which she does not choose should appear on the surface. She is animated in conversation when she is led into it. Otherwise, she is silent and retiring, but obliging in the extreme; always ready to take part in anything that is going forward She never needs, for example, being twice asked to sing. She is free from the vice which Horace ascribes to all singers, of not complying when asked, and never leaving off when they have once begun. If this be a general rule, she is an exception to it.