 little, and would be happy to go to the sale.
    Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the
thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an
accusation against him as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated
by a disposal of property. Like most people who assert their freedom with regard
to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel
with any one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion -
that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to which he
gave the mask of an opinion. When he was under an irritating impression of this
kind he would go about for days with a defiant look, the colour changing in his
transparent skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something which he
had to dart upon.
    This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who
had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would
have been struck with a contrast. He was not sorry to have this occasion for
appearing in public before the Middlemarch tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the
rest, who looked down on him as an adventurer, and were in a state of brutal
ignorance about Dante - who sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of
a breed very much in need of crossing. He stood in a conspicuous place not far
from the auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown
backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially welcomed
as a connoissure by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity of his
great faculties.
    And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their
powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly
alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopædic knowledge. Some
saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be constantly insisting on the
merits of all articles from boot-jacks to »Berghems;« but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and would have
liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a
higher figure for his recommendation.
    Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him. When
Will Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its
right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm, which he distributed
on the equitable principle of praising those things most which were most in
