"I will tell you the secret in a few words. My brother Humphrey adores you with all the simplicity and strength of a noble artistic nature."
"Does he? You mean he likes me very much. How good he his! I am glad to hear it, Mr. Cornelius, though why it need be a secret I do not know."
"Then my poor brother—he is all loyalty, and brings you a virgin heart," (O Cornelius! and the model with the blue black hair!) "an unsullied name, and the bright prospects of requited genius—my brother may hope?"
Phillis did not understand one word.
"Certainly," she said; "I am sure I would like to see him hoping."
"I will tell him, sister Phillis," said Cornelius, nodding with a sunny smile. "You have made two men happy, and one at least grateful."
His mission was accomplished, his task done. It will hardly be believed that this treacherous bard, growing more and more nervous as he reflected on the uncertainty of the wedded life, actually came to a sudden resolution to plead his brother's cause. Humphrey was the younger. Let him bear off the winsome bride.
"It will be a change in our lives," he said. "You will allow me to have my share in his happiness?"
Phillis made no reply. Decidedly the Poet was gone distraught with overmuch reading and thought.
Cornelius, smiling, crowing, and laughing almost like a child, pressed her hand and left her, stepping with a youthful elasticity across the lawn. Humphrey, sitting beside Mrs. L'Estrange, was bewildering that good lady with a dissertation on colour à propos of a flower which he held in his hand. Agatha could not understand this strange pair, who looked so youthful until you came to see them closely, and then they seemed to be of any age you pleased to name. Nor could she understand their talk, which was pedantic, affected, and continually involved the theory that the speaker was, next to his brother, the greatest of living men.