he is not a fool before he has been tried by a woman!
Dacier's wretched tendency under vexation to conceive grotesque analogies,
anti-poetic, not to say cockney similes, which had slightly chilled Diana at
Rovio, set him looking at yonder crescent with the hoop, as at the shape of a
white cat climbing a wheel. Men of the northern blood will sometimes lend their
assent to poetical images, even to those that do not stun the mind like
bludgeons and imperatively, by much repetition, command their assent; and it is
for a solid exchange and interest in usury with soft poetical creatures when
they are so condescending; but they are seized by the grotesque. In spite of
efforts to efface or supplant it, he saw the white cat, nothing else, even to
thinking that she had jumped cleverly to catch the wheel. He was a true
descendant of practical hard-grained fighting Northerners, of gnarled dwarf
imaginations, chivalrous though they were, and heroes to have serviceable and
valiant gentlemen for issue. Without at all tracing back to its origin his
detestable image of the white cat on the dead circle, he kicked at the links
between his uncle and Diana Warwick, whatever they had been; particularly at the
present revival of them. Old Lady Dacier's blunt speech, and his father's fixed
opinion, hissed in his head.
    They were ignorant of his autumnal visit to the Italian Lakes, after the
winter's Nile-boat expedition; and also of the degree of his recent intimacy
with Mrs. Warwick; or else, as he knew, he would have heard more hissing things.
Her patronage of Miss Paynham exposed her to attacks where she was deemed
vulnerable; Lady Dacier muttered old saws as to the flocking of birds; he did
not accurately understand it, thought it indiscreet, at best. But in regard to
his experience, he could tell himself that a woman more guileless of luring
never drew breath. On the contrary, candour said it had always been he who had
schemed and pressed for the meeting. He was at liberty to do it, not being bound
in honour elsewhere. Besides, despite his acknowledgement of her beauty, Mrs.
Warwick was not quite his ideal of the perfectly beautiful woman. Constance
Asper came nearer to it. He had the English taste for red and white, and for
cold outlines; he secretly admired a statuesque demeanour with a statue's eyes.
The national approbation of a reserved haughtiness in woman, a tempered disdain
in her slightly lifted small upperlip and drooped eyelids, was shared by him;
and Constance