mes seemed startling as addressed to an uncle. But Mr.
Wentworth could not do these things. He could not even bring himself
to attempt to measure her position in the world. She was the wife of
a foreign nobleman who desired to repudiate her. This had a singular
sound, but the old man felt himself destitute of the materials for
a judgment. It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own
experience, as a man of the world and an almost public character; but
they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself--much
more to reveal to Eugenia by interrogations possibly too innocent--the
unfurnished condition of this repository.

It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said,
to his nephew; though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe. He
was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible not to
think well of him; and yet it seemed as if there were something almost
impudent, almost vicious--or as if there ought to be--in a young man
being at once so joyous and so positive. It was to be observed that
while Felix was not at all a serious young man there was somehow more of
him--he had more weight and volume and resonance--than a number of young
men who were distinctly serious. While Mr. Wentworth meditated upon this
anomaly his nephew was admiring him unrestrictedly. He thought him a
most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman, with a very handsome
head, of the ascetic type, which he promised himself the profit of
sketching. Felix was far from having made a secret of the fact that he
wielded the paint-brush, and it was not his own fault if it failed to be
generally understood that he was prepared to execute the most striking
likenesses on the most reasonable terms. "He is an artist--my cousin is
an artist," said Gertrude; and she offered this information to every one
who would receive it. She offered it to herself, as it were, by way
of admonition and reminder; she repeated to herself at odd moments,
in lonely places, that Felix was invested with this sacred character.
Gertrude had never seen an artist before; she had only read about such
people. They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life
was made up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other
persons. And it merely quickened her meditations on this point that
Felix should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an
artist. "I have never gone into the thing seriou