of Prester John; and the women sneer
covertly. Our X---- belles must have disliked you. How did you excite
their displeasure?"

"I don't know. I seldom spoke to them--they were nothing to me. I
considered them only as something to be glanced at from a distance;
their dresses and faces were often pleasing enough to the eye: but
I could not understand their conversation, nor even read their
countenances. When I caught snatches of what they said, I could never
make much of it; and the play of their lips and eyes did not help me at
all."

"That was your fault, not theirs. There are sensible, as well as
handsome women in X----; women it is worth any man's while to talk to,
and with whom I can talk with pleasure: but you had and have no pleasant
address; there is nothing in you to induce a woman to be affable. I have
remarked you sitting near the door in a room full of company, bent on
hearing, not on speaking; on observing, not on entertaining; looking
frigidly shy at the commencement of a party, confusingly vigilant about
the middle, and insultingly weary towards the end. Is that the way, do
you think, ever to communicate pleasure or excite interest? No; and if
you are generally unpopular, it is because you deserve to be so."

"Content!" I ejaculated.

"No, you are not content; you see beauty always turning its back on
you; you are mortified and then you sneer. I verily believe all that is
desirable on earth--wealth, reputation, love--will for ever to you be
the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you'll look up at them; they will
tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you
have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you'll go away calling them
sour."

Cutting as these words might have been under some circumstances, they
drew no blood now. My life was changed; my experience had been varied
since I left X----, but Hunsden could not know this; he had seen me only
in the character of Mr. Crimsworth's clerk--a dependant amongst wealthy
strangers, meeting disdain with a hard front, conscious of an unsocial
and unattractive exterior, refusing to sue for notice which I was sure
would be withheld, declining to evince an admiration which I knew would
be scorned as worthless. He could not be aware that since then youth and
loveliness had been to me everyday objects; that I had studied them at
leisure and closely, and had seen the plain texture of truth under
the embroidery of appearance; nor could he, kee