Villette

inferior creature! A mere lackey for Dr. John: his valet, his foot-boy! Is it possible that fine generous gentleman – handsome as a vision – offers you his honourable hand and gallant heart, and promises to protect your flimsy person and wretchless mind through the storms and struggles of life – and you hang back – you scorn, you sting, you torture him! Have you power to do this? Who gave you that power? Where is it? Does it lie all in your beauty – your pink and white complexion and your yellow hair? Does this bind his soul at your feet, and bend his neck under your yoke? Does this purchase for you his affection, his tenderness, his thoughts, his hopes, his interest, his noble, cordial love – and will you not have it? Do you scorn it? You are only dissembling: you are not in earnest; you love him; you long for him; but you trifle with his heart to make him more surely yours?«
    »Bah! How you run on! I don't understand half you have said.«
    I had got her out into the garden ere this. I now set her down on a seat and told her she should not stir till she had avowed which she meant in the end to accept – the man or the monkey.
    »Him you call the man,« said she, »is bourgeois, sandy-haired, and answers to the name of John! – cela suffit: je n'en veux pas. Colonel de Hamal is a gentleman of excellent connections, perfect manners, sweet appearance, with pale interesting face, and hair and eyes like an Italian. Then too he is the most delightful company possible – a man quite in my way; not sensible and serious like the other, but one with whom I can talk on equal terms – who does not plague, and bore, and harass me with depths, and heights, and passions, and talents for which I have no taste. There now. Don't hold me so fast.«
    I slackened my grasp, and she darted off. I did not care to pursue her.
    Somehow I could not avoid returning once more in the direction of the corridor to get another glimpse of Dr. John; but I met him on the garden – steps, standing where the light from a window fell broad. His well-proportioned figure was not to be mistaken, for I doubt whether there was another in that assemblage his equal. He carried his hat in his hand; his uncovered head, his face and fine brow were most handsome and manly.
His
features were not delicate, not slight like those of a woman, nor were they cold, frivolous, and feeble; though well cut, they were not so chiselled, so frittered away, as to lose in power and significance what they gained in unmeaning symmetry. Much feeling spoke in them at times, and more sat silent in his eye. Such at least were my thoughts of him: to me he seemed all this. An inexpressible sense of wonder occupied me as I looked at this man, and reflected that
he
could be slighted.
    It was not my intention to approach or address him in the garden, our terms of acquaintance not warranting such a step; I had only meant to view him in the crowd – myself unseen: coming upon him thus alone, I withdrew. But he was looking out for me, or rather for her who had been with me; therefore he descended the steps, and followed me down the alley.
    »You know Miss Fanshawe? I have often wished to ask whether you knew her,« said he.
    »Yes: I know her.«
    »Intimately?«
    »Quite as intimately as I wish.«
    »What have you done with her now?«
    »Am I her keeper?« I felt inclined to ask; but I simply answered, »I have shaken her well, and would have shaken her better, but she escaped out of my hands and ran away.«
    »Would you favour me,« he asked, »by watching over her this one evening, and observing that she does nothing imprudent – does not, for instance, run out into the night-air immediately after dancing?«
    »I may, perhaps, look after her a little, since you wish it; but she likes her own way too well to submit readily to control.«
    »She is so young, so thoroughly artless,« said he.
    »To me she is an enigma,« I responded.
    »Is she?« he asked – much interested. »How?«
    »It would be difficult to say how – difficult, at least, to tell
you
how.«
    »And why me?«
    »I wonder she is not better pleased that you are so much her friend.«
    »But she has not the slightest idea how much I
am
her friend. That is precisely the point I cannot teach her. May I inquire did she ever speak of me to you?«
    »Under the name of ›Isidore‹ she has talked about you often; but I must add that it is only within the last ten minutes I have discovered that you and ›Isidore‹