fry. He is deep, studious, excellent; and does it not strike you that
if he descended among us he would be like a Triton ashore?«
    Lætitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her ideal of the
feminine, not yet conciliated with her acuter character, owing to the absence of
full pleasure from her life - the unhealed wound she had sustained and the cramp
of a bondage of such old date as to seem iron - induced her to say, as if
consenting: »You think he is not quite at home in society?« But she wished to
defend him strenuously, and as a consequence she had to quit the self-imposed
ideal of her daily acting, whereby - the case being unwonted, very novel to her
- the lady's intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it;
so sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of a part,
however naturally it may come to us! and to this will each honest
autobiographical member of the animated world bear witness.
    She added: »You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy him
brooding, gloomy? He is the reverse; he is cheerful, he is indifferent to
personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon Whitford's,
and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly ... but it has not been your cruel
word grumpiness. The truth is, he is anxious about Crossjay: and about other
things; and he wants to leave. He is at a disadvantage beside very lively and
careless gentlemen at present, but your Triton ashore, is unfair, it is ugly. He
is, I can say, the truest man I know.«
    »I did not question his goodness, Lætitia.«
    »You threw an accent on it.«
    »Did I? I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best.«
    »Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has defended
you against me, Clara, ever since I took to calling you Clara. Perhaps when you
supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was meditating how he could aid
you. Last night he gave me reasons for thinking you would do wisely to confide
in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is no longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a
devoted friend.«
    »He is an untiring pedestrian.«
    »Oh!«
    Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing them
divide, now adopted the method of making three that two may