he affair is not
much, but it shows, as I foretold, that, the moment he found something
more amusing, his taste for yachting would pass off.' 'You are right,
you always are.' What really was this affair, which Lord Eskdale held
lightly? With a character like Tancred, everything may become important.
Profound and yet simple, deep in self-knowledge yet inexperienced, his
reserve, which would screen him from a thousand dangers, was just the
quality which would insure his thraldom by the individual who could once
effectually melt the icy barrier and reach the central heat. At this
moment of his life, with all the repose, and sometimes even the high
ceremony, on the surface, he was a being formed for high-reaching
exploits, ready to dare everything and reckless of all consequences, if
he proposed to himself an object which he believed to be just and great.
This temper of mind would, in all things, have made him act with that
rapidity, which is rashness with the weak, and decision with the strong.
The influence of woman on him was novel. It was a disturbing influence,
on which he had never counted in those dreams and visions in which there
had figured more heroes than heroines. In the imaginary interviews in
which he had disciplined his solitary mind, his antagonists had been
statesmen, prelates, sages, and senators, with whom he struggled and
whom he vanquished.

He was not unequal in practice to his dreams. His shyness would have
vanished in an instant before a great occasion; he could have addressed
a public assembly; he was capable of transacting important affairs.
These were all situations and contingencies which he had foreseen, and
which for him were not strange, for he had become acquainted with them
in his reveries. But suddenly he was arrested by an influence for which
he was unprepared; a precious stone made him stumble who was to have
scaled the Alps. Why should the voice, the glance, of another agitate
his heart? The cherubim of his heroic thoughts not only deserted him,
but he was left without the guardian angel of his shyness. He melted,
and the iceberg might degenerate into a puddle.

Lord Eskdale drew his conclusions like a clever man of the world, and in
general he would have been right; but a person like Tancred was in much
greater danger of being captured than a common-place youth entering
life with second-hand experience, and living among those who ruled his
opinions by their sneers and sarcasms. A malic