ough; they listened
for her, as dogs' eyes do. When she came in, bonneted for a walk, his
agitation was dog-like. When she hung on her lover timidly, and went
forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or anything save the secret
raptures the sight of her gave him, which are the Old Dog's own. For
beneficent Nature requites him: His sensations cannot be heroic, but
they have a fulness and a wagging delight as good in their way. And this
capacity for humble unaspiring worship has its peculiar guerdon. When
Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what will he think of himself?
Let no one despise the Old Dog. Through him doth Beauty vindicate her
sex.

It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of beholding
her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her
offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged
comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he
had to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of
Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round
the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their
hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked up his ears. She, too, made the
remark that everybody seemed to look happy, and he heard it with thrills
of joy. "So everybody is, where you are!" he would have wished to say,
if he dared, but was restrained by fears that his burning eloquence
would commit him. Ripton knew the people he met twice. It would have
been difficult to persuade him they were the creatures of accident.

From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton's frowned protest, Richard
boldly struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning to
perform the circuit. Here Ripton had some justification for his jealous
pangs. The young girl's golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily
sad, face; her gentle graceful figure in the black straight dress she
wore; a sort of half-conventual air she had--a mark of something not
of class, that was partly beauty's, partly maiden innocence growing
conscious, partly remorse at her weakness and dim fear of the future it
was sowing--did attract the eye-glasses. Ripton had to learn that eyes
are bearable, but eye-glasses an abomination. They fixed a spell upon
his courage; for somehow the youth had always ranked them as emblems
of our nobility, and hearing two exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to
front and rear several times, drawl in gibberish gen