So considering that his period of occupation was over, and Maria's rooms, if not given up to a new tenant, were, at any rate, to let, Harry did not feel very easy in his cousin's company, nor she possibly in his. He found either that he had nothing to say to her, or that what she had to say to him was rather dull and commonplace, and that the red lip of a white-necked pipe of Virginia was decidedly more agreeable to him now than Maria's softest accents and most melancholy moue. When George went to Kensington, then, Harry did not care much about going, and pleaded other engagements.
At his uncle's house in Hill Street the poor lad was no better amused, and, indeed, was treated by the virtuous people there with scarce any attention at all. The ladies did not scruple to deny themselves when he came; he could scarce have believed in such insincerity after their caresses, their welcome, their repeated vows of affection; but happening to sit with the Lamberts for an hour after he had called upon his aunt, he saw her ladyship's chairmen arrive with an empty chair, and his aunt step out and enter the vehicle, and not even blush when he made her a bow from the opposite window. To be denied by his own relations—to have that door which had opened to him so kindly, slammed in his face! He would not have believed such a thing possible, poor simple Harry said. Perhaps he thought the door-knocker had a tender heart, and was not made of brass; not more changed than the head of that knocker was my Lady Warrington's virtuous face when she passed her nephew.
“My father's own brother's wife! What have I done to offend her? Oh, Aunt Lambert, Aunt Lambert, did you ever see such cold-heartedness?” cries out Harry, with his usual impetuosity.
“Do we make any difference to you, my dear Harry?” says Aunt Lambert, with a side look at her youngest daughter. “The world may look coldly at you, but we don't belong to it: so you may come to us in safety.”
“In this house you are different from other people,” replies Harry. “I don't know how, but I always feel quiet and happy somehow when I come to you.”
“Quis me uno vivit felicior? aut magis hac est
Optandum vita dicere quis potuit?”
calls out General Lambert. “Do you know where I got these verses, Mr. Gownsman?” and he addresses his son from college, who is come to pass an Easter holiday with his parents. “You got them out of Catullus, sir,” says the scholar.
“I got them out of no such thing, sir. I got them out of my favourite Democritus Junior—out of old Burton, who has provided many indifferent scholars with learning;” and who and Montaigne, were favourite authors with the good General.