s not fictitious and was
well sustained, while her heart was kept thirsting for the key to it.
In advance were Adela and Edward Buxley, who was only a rich alderman's
only son, but had the virtue of an extraordinary power of drawing
caricatures, and was therefore useful in exaggerating the features of
disagreeable people, and showing how odious they were: besides endearing
pleasant ones exhibiting how comic they could be. Gossips averred that
before Mr. Pole had been worried by his daughters into giving that
mighty sum for Brookfield, Arabella had accepted Edward as her suitor;
but for some reason or other he had apparently fallen from his high
estate. To tell the truth, Arabella conceived that he had simply obeyed
her wishes, while he knew he was naughtily following his own; and
Adela, without introspection at all, was making her virgin effort at
the caricaturing of our sex in his person: an art for which she promised
well.

Out of the long black shadows of the solitary trees of the park, and
through low yellow moonlight, they passed suddenly into the muffed
ways of the wood. Mr. Pericles was ineffably provoking. He had come
for gallantry's sake, and was not to be rallied, and would echo every
question in a roar, and there was no drawing of the man out at all. He
knocked against branches, and tripped over stumps, and ejaculated with
energy; but though he gave no heed or help to his fair associate, she
thought not the worse of him, so heroic can women be toward any creature
that will permit himself to be clothed by a mystery. At times the party
hung still, fancying the voice aloft, and then, after listening to the
unrelieved stillness, they laughed, and trod the stiff dry ferns and
soft mosses once more. At last they came to a decided halt, when the
proposition to return caused Adela to come up to Mr. Pericles and say
to him, "Now, you must confess! You have prohibited her from singing
to-night so that we may continue to be mystified. I call this quite
shameful of you!"

And even as Mr. Pericles was protesting that he was the most mystified
of the company, his neck lengthened, and his head went round, and his
ear was turned to the sky, while he breathed an elaborate "Ah!" And
sure enough that was the voice of the woods, cleaving the night air,
not distant. A sleepy fire of early moonlight hung through the dusky
fir-branches. The voice had the woods to itself, and seemed to fill them
and soar over them, it was so full